rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: About time
    sub title: a history of civilization in twelve clocks
  name:
    name part: Rooney, David
    name part: 1974-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nyu
    date issued: 2021
    copyright date: 2021
    edition: First American edition.
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: ix, 271 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
  abstract: A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world. For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India and the high-precision clocks circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites that have been launched since 1978. Clocks have helped us navigate the world and build empires, and have even taken us to the brink of destruction. Elites have used them to wield power, make money, govern citizens and control lives-and sometimes the people have used them to fight back. Through the stories of twelve clocks, About Time brings pivotal moments from the past vividly to life. Historian and lifelong clock enthusiast David Rooney takes us from the unveiling of al-Jazari's castle clock in 1206, in present-day Turkey, to the Cape of Good Hope observatory at the southern tip of Africa, where nineteenth-century British government astronomers moved the gears of empire with a time ball and a gun, to the burial of a plutonium clock now sealed beneath a public park in Osaka, where it will keep time for 5,000 years. Rooney shows, through these artifacts, how time has been imagined, politicized and weaponized over the centuries and how it might bring peace. Ultimately, he writes, the technical history of horology is only the start of the story. A history of clocks is a history of civilization.
  table of contents: Introduction: Korean Air Lines Flight 007, 1983 -- Order : sundial at the Forum, Rome, 263 BCE -- Faith : Castle Clock, Diyār Bakr, 1206 -- Virtue : the hourglass of Temperance, Siena, 1338 -- Markets : stock exchange clock, Amsterdam, 1611 -- Knowledge : Samrat Yantra, Jaipur, 1732-35 -- Empires : observatory time ball, Cape Town, 1833 -- Manufacture : Gog and Magog, London, 1865 -- Morality : electric time system, Brno, 1903-6 -- Resistance : telescope driving-clock, Edinburgh, 1913 -- Identity : golden telephone handsets, London, 1935 -- War : miniature atomic clocks, Munich, 1972 -- Peace : plutonium timekeeper, Osaka, 6970.
  note: David Rooney.
  note: First published in Great Britain by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    topic: Clocks and watches
    topic: History
  subject:
    topic: Horology
    topic: History
  subject:
    topic: Time
    topic: Social aspects
    topic: History
  subject:
    topic: Civilization
  classification: TS542 .R66 2021
  classification: 681.1/13
  identifier: 9780393867930
  identifier: 0393867935
  identifier: 9780393867947
  identifier: 2021025193
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 210606
    record change date: 20220105155232.0
    record identifier: in00004367849