The history of clocks is one of tyranny and revolution
One evening in March 1898, gunfire rang out in Mumbai’s Crawford Market. That night, angry townspeople raised their guns on an unusual target: the public clock tower atop the market.
The watch had been erected years before, just before the Indians, demanded by the British government, complied with the standardization of time by the West. The division of eternity by this device seemed like yet another fist of colonial oppression, a tool of centralized control. That night, bullets pierced the clock face, partially destroying one of its dials.
Telling time with clocks – and mechanical clocks in particular – played an important role in the development and formation of human societies as well as the growth of industry. And, for good reason, people fought them every step of the way. The mechanization of timekeeping separate from nature has changed the way we think and behave, spawning a new psychology and sparking rebellion.
“The clock is both the oppressor and the symbol of the oppressor,” explains technology historian David Rooney. Popular science.
The first mechanical clocks appear in 13th-century Italy
Mechanical clocks first appeared in northern Italy in the 13th century, following earlier methods of timekeeping like sundials and hourglasses. Timing devices dated back to the water clocks of ancient Babylon and Egypt, and European monks were known to use candles of specific lengths to time their prayers.
It was a technology called verge escapement that laid the foundation for mechanical clocks. The verge escapement is a weight-driven gear whose teeth are repeatedly stopped and released by a pair of metal vanes mounted on a central bar called a foliot. A clock “tick It’s literally the teeth of the wheels that hit the exhaust and are then allowed to escape as the foliot turns,” explains Rooney.
A descendant of the verge escapement still constitutes the beating heart of modern mechanical clocks. If you remove your watch face, you can see it at work. The difference is that in your watch the pulling force of the escapement is a battery. In the first clocks, it was gravity.
The rapid rise of clocks in bell towers
Mechanical clocks were invented for a specific purpose: to work in tandem with bell towers. Bell towers had been erected in city centers and were rung by timekeepers who monitored the sun to tell everyone when it was time to wake up, eat, work, go to church, and attend public meetings.
“There was a demand for a device to mechanize the practice of ringing bells,” says Rooney. Before the clock, bells were rung manually. Equipping a bell tower with a mechanical clock “could free someone from this work”.
The mechanical clock spread from Italy to Europe, from one urban center to another, adorning the bell towers of England, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
In the book, The strangest people in the world: how the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperousHarvard anthropologist Dr. Joseph Henrich writes that 20 percent of towns of 5,000 or more had at least one public clock in 1450. Most churches had one by 1600. Their proliferation likely contributed to the rise of the Western psychology of time as we experience it today.
“The arrival of clocks in urban spaces gave the masses a new type of temporal discipline,” says Rooney.
How standardized time has changed our brains
People’s subjective judgments and estimates about the passage of time are what experts call psychological time. If we know the duration of the things that occupy our time – like how long it takes us to make a cup of coffee or walk to work – we will use these memories as internal measures of time. This is one of the many reasons why the 2020 quarantine seemed like such a temporal anomaly. Separated from our routines, time began to resemble an accordion, expanding and contracting depending on our mood.
Likewise, the internal experience of time has changed with new technology. Before mechanical clocks, days – the expanse between sunrise and sunset depending on the seasons – were divided only by tasks. With clock time, days became a series of fixed increments.
Business owners began paying their employees hourly. And in societies where hourly wages have become commonplace, the conceptualization of time has evolved to include a sense of scarcity, as if time not spent “properly” is wasted. This mentality is known as time saving. “Time is money” became the refrain.
Related stories from “The Story of Everything”
How clocks and time became systems of control and oppression
As clocks became more common and railroads gave rise to standard time in the 1800s, the clock became a symbol of order. “Clocks were used by people with power to keep others in check,” Rooney explains.
In his book, About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve ClocksRooney singles out the textile industry as one of the most oppressive industries in its use of clocks to regulate workers’ lives. Textile managers would forbid their employees from wearing watches, changing the wall clock throughout the day to save more time and make their workers work for the same pay.
In his book Capital: a critique of political economyKarl Marx illustrates the tyranny of these workplaces by quoting a British government factory inspector who said, “Moments are the elements of profit.”
Following the Crawford Market protests, massive public demonstrations continued in Mumbai until the turn of the century. In 1905, Mumbai’s largest textile factory changed its clocks to the new standard time, triggering an all-out strike. The frustrated Indian people were in good company. Many people around the world have spoken out against the idea of a single, universal authority.
A few years later, suffragettes planted a bomb in the Royal Observatory of Scotland, one floor away from the telescope’s chronograph, a clockwork device used by scientists to observe time, Rooney writes. Like the anticolonialists in Mumbai, women aimed for power and control over standard time.
Other targets of suffragettes included men’s clubs, train stations and telephone lines. The night of the observatory burglary, their pipe bomb blew out the windows and doors. The clock that kept the telescope pointed at a specific star was badly damaged.
Resistance to clocks and time continues today. Movements like the Great Resignation, quiet resignations, the four-day work week, and efforts to abolish daylight saving time are all echoes of history’s rebellions for control of time. Centuries after clocks ruled our days, we have not forgotten that time is just a guest in our collective way of thinking.
In The story of everythingPopular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins of everyday things.
The best new PopSci 2025 releases
