One of the earliest
examples of time anxiety in history is found in the French song “Frère
Jacques.” In it, Brother James is rebuked for sleeping and not ringing
the Matins bells at midnight. The song reflects the seriousness with
which the Church took the times designated for prayer. Following Psalm 119:164, which says, “Seven times a day I praise you for your
righteous rules,” monastic liturgies included seven set times for prayer.
Initially, given the changing length of day and night throughout the
year, liturgical hours were not fixed. Instead, the Church regularized
the hours by measuring the passage of time. By the 1200s, the mechanical clock was invented to keep pace with a chime that signaled when to
ring the bells for the monastic hours.
Not long after, mechanical clocks appeared in city towers. In 1288, the
tower clock known as “Big Ben” went up across from Westminster Abbey. In
1292, a clock was built in Canterbury Cathedral. The oldest surviving
tower clock in England, dating to 1386, is at Salisbury Cathedral. In
addition to time, these clocks often marked heavenly phenomena. The most
elaborate surviving example is in Prague. Installed in 1410, this clock
told time using a standard 24-hour day, as well as in “Italian time,”
which put the 24th hour at sunset. Not only could this clock accurately
track this time as it changed throughout the year, but it also showed the
position of the sun on the ecliptic, the phase of the moon, the spring
equinox, and stellar time.
The first reference to a pocket clock dates to 1462. Clocks worn as
pendants emerged in the 1500s, and pocket watches emerged after 1675,
when Charles II introduced the waistcoat to England as a standard item of
apparel. Pocket watches remained a luxury item until the second half of
the eighteenth century when they came into more general use. Clocks began
to appear in houses about the same time.
As interesting as the history is, the implications of clocks for our
relationship with time are far more important. With the industrial
revolution, the clock increasingly controlled people’s lives. Before,
farmers and craftsmen would set their own hours and work at their own
pace. Once clocks appeared, work hours and pace were set by the factories.
Efficiency improved, but often little regard was shown for the health and
wellbeing of workers.
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