Last week, in Part I on my series on Renaissance time keeping, we discussed the Julian calendar’s
Roman roots and its Gregorian revision the 16th century. This week,
we explore the evolution of the clock in Renaissance Italy and its implications.
There is no clock like the Present. It is a colored steel
circle with a single hand. Instead of counting the hours, minutes or seconds,
it turns a tiny bit each day. A full year later, it will make a complete
revolution of the clock face.
The Kickstarter
Handbook, which references the Kickstarter campaign which funded the
Present’s creation, credits its creator, Scott Thrift, with saying: “I’m at war
with seconds. The second hand is a recent invention. I think it’s only 120
years old or so. It damages the way that life actually is. There’s a larger
scale at work.”
Value judgments aside, Thrift is completely mistaken about
the second hand. Second hands measuring 1/60ths of a minute have been in use
since 1670 or earlier. Their introduction in the last century of the
Renaissance represented advancements in the design and accuracy of clocks. The
roots of these breakthroughs stem from the centuries prior to the Renaissance,
and their attainment made the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions possible.
Few things have changed the world like the reckoning of time.
