Full Description
The history of timekeeping has always involved choosing or converting between various ways of representing time, a phenomenon called time pluralism. The Unsettled Clock: The Persistence of Time Pluralism explores time pluralism by documenting historical cases and examining its persistence in present. Drawing examples from medieval York, the Habsburg empire of early modern Europe, Renaissance astronomy, legal time in the US and UK before time zones were adopted, and the persistence of time pluralism in current atomic time metrology, this analysis offers a political and historical look into how timekeeping has been shaped, challenged, and manipulated.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: What Is Time Pluralism?
Chapter 1. Producing Public Timekeeping and Time Pluralism
Chapter 2. A Bell for Every Market: Time Pluralism in Late Medieval York
Chapter 3. Cosmopolitan Times: Time Pluralism Habsburg Horology
Chapter 4. Time Pluralism and Scientists' Choices
Chapter 5. Humbuggery and Time Pluralism: Nineteenth-Century Time Gambits
Chapter 6. Time Pluralism and Current Timescales
Chapter 7. Using Atoms versus Earth's Rotation
Chapter 8. Time Pluralism and the Leap Second Problem
Chapter 9. Unsettling the Clock
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
