Carlo M. Cipolla

Clocks and Culture

The history of the clock opens a window on how different cultures have viewed time and on Europe's path to industrialization.

How did a time-keeping device affect the growth of crafts guilds and the scientific research that led to the Industrial Revolution? Clocks and Culture is a brief history of the changes wrought by and on Europe over four hundred years due to technological advances in timekeeping and the rise of a time-aware culture. In his introduction, Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, puts this classic book in perspective. 14 b/w illustrations.

"Cipolla has a sharp eye for the heaven in a grain of sand. He takes a prosaic piece of hardware and uses it as a path into some of the central themes of history.... Imaginative and wide-ranging."—The Economist

"The story is fascinating and is told with the author's customary enthusiasm and lucid scholarship."—Times Literary Supplement

"Brilliant.... Demonstrates the economic and technological development by which the continent thrust into the forefront of civilization."—The Listener