Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300-1800

✍ Scribed by Paul Glennie, Nigel Thrift

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 479
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Timekeeping is an essential activity in the modern world, and we take it for granted that our lives our shaped by the hours of the day. Yet what seems so ordinary today is actually the extraordinary outcome of centuries of technical innovation and circulation of ideas about time. Shaping the Day is a pathbreaking study of the practice of timekeeping in England and Wales between 1300 and 1800. Drawing on many unique historical sources, ranging from personal diaries to housekeeping manuals, Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift illustrate how a particular kind of common sense about time came into being, and how it developed during this period. Many remarkable figures make their appearance, ranging from the well-known, such as Edmund Halley, Samuel Pepys, and John Harrison, who solved the problem of longitude, to less familiar characters, including sailors, gamblers, and burglars. Overturning many common perceptions of the past-for example, that clock time and the industrial revolution were intimately related-this unique historical study will engage all readers interested in how ''telling the time'' has come to dominate our way of life.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
List of Figures......Page 7
List of Plates......Page 10
List of Tables......Page 11
Acknowledgements......Page 14
1. Introduction: The Measured Heart......Page 16
2. Clocks, Clock Times, and Social Change......Page 37
3. ‘Not Everyone Occupies the Same Now’: Reconceptualizing Clock Time......Page 80
4. Clock Times in Medieval and Early Modern Bristol......Page 115
5. The Provision of Clock Time in Pre-Modern England......Page 150
6. Clock Times in Everyday Lives......Page 196
7. Precision in Everyday Lives......Page 267
8. ‘Posted Within Shot of the Grave’: Seafaring Times......Page 302
9. The Pursuit of Precision......Page 352
10. Clocks from Nowhere? John Harrison in Context......Page 382
11. Some Concluding Remarks......Page 430
Bibliography......Page 442
C......Page 474
H......Page 476
M......Page 477
R......Page 478
Y......Page 479