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The mechanical clock was one of the technological
advances that brought Western civilization to a position
of world leadership. In Revolution in Time, David
S. Landes details how and why this breakthrough occurred.
Until the fourteenth century we hear only
of waterclocks and sundials. Then the mechanical clock swept
Europe -- a "revolution in time" that,, the author
explains, was driven by the needs of the Church and of the
urban labor force. In the 1500s watches appeared and, by
the end of the century, proliferated. Landes relates that
Elizabeth I of England owned a watch built into a finger
ring and equipped with a kind of alarm -- a prong that came
out and gently scratched her finger.
Landes also describes improvements in timekeeping devices
-- the pendulum and the balance spring, for example -- and
how some of the keenest minds in Europe labored long years
to develop the marine chronometer -- an invention of incalculable
importance for trade and exploration in that it established
the accurate calculation of longitude.
In another section, devoted to the clock
and watchmaking industry, Landes treats such topics as fakes
and smuggling in the eighteenth century market; the dazzling
success of the Swiss watchmakers, which put their country
on the world economic map; and how the "quartz revolution"
brought Swiss supremacy to an end.
Enhanced by Landes's zesty style and his
gift for selecting memorable anecdotes, Revolution in
Time is a book one can read straight through from cover
to cover without once checking the clock.
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