A Minor History of / Time Without Clocks

Lewis Mumford, in his classic history of technology, Technics and Civilization, reminds us of the social and emotional work of this early clock, keeping a desirable life set apart by spiritual habits that were measured by marking the hours. “Within the walls of the monastery was sanctuary,” he writes. “Under the rule of order surprise and doubt and

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- “On the elegant analog clock, meanwhile, time swells and recedes, like waves and seasons and life. The hands evoke the rotation of the earth, the movements of celestial objects, the cosmos.”