Time Tamed

Nicholas Foulkes

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781471170645
• eBook ISBN: 9781471170652

'Downright fascinating...indispensable reading' Daily Telegraph
'Nicholas Foulkes'excellent...book isbeautifully illustrated. Captivating' Daily Mail
For more than 25, 000 years, humanity has sought to understand and measure the passing of time, in the process creating some of the most remarkable and beautiful timepieces. Now, in Nicholas Foulkes' lavishly illustrated book, the battle to tame time is brought vividly to life. From the baboon bone dating back to the palaeolithic era that marked the lunar cycle and on to the 3500-year-old water clock at Karnak, from our earliest days mankind has sought to track the passing of time. More recently, the struggles to measure longitude and to create a workable train timetable across the vast, open expanse of the United States have inspired new developments. In Time Tamed, Nicholas Foulkes reveals how we have done this by focusing on some of the most significant developments in timekeeping across the ages. He also highlights the most stunning and lavish clocks and watches in history - from Big Ben to Rolex - for telling the time has never been purely about function, but also about design. The book is filled with remarkable tales, from the 14th century monk in St Albans who created one of the first mechanical clocks to the Holy Roman Emperor who built a clock into an automated ship that fired a cannon to summon guests to dinner. More recently, there was the Surrey woman who used a Napoleonic era watch to 'deliver' the accurate time to London shopkeepers in the wartime era of Churchill, or the Swiss denture maker who solved a tricky problem for the Indian Raj's polo players. Time Tamed is a book you'll want to spend many hours enjoying.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Introduction
• The Bare Bones of Time: Ishango Bone – Palaeolithic Era
• Pit Stop: Warren Field Calendar – Mesolithic Era
• A Bucket with a Hole: The Karnak Clepsydra
• Back to the Future: The Antikythera Mechanism
• The Ides of March: Julian Calendar
• The Twilight of Antiquity: The Great Clock of Gaza
• The Wonders of the East: Charlemagne and the Caliph’s Clock
• The Missing Link: Su Song’s Celestial Clock
• The Elephant in the Shopping Mall: The Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari
• A Mechanical Stairway to Heaven: Richard of Wallingford’s Astronomical Clock
• The Mechanical Cock that Crowed: The Marvel of Strasbourg
• The Lost Wonder of the Renaissance: De’Dondi’s Astrarium
• The Timepiece Becomes Personal: The Nuremberg ‘Pomander’ Watch
• The Howard Hughes of the Holy Roman Empire: The Moving Mechanical Musical Boat Clock of Emperor Rudolf II
• Buried Treasure: The Emerald Watch of the Cheapside Hoard
• Japan’s Moveable Hours: Wadokei
• The Search for Longitude: Harrison’s Marine Chronometer
• Time with a Bang: Canon Solaire
• American Polymath: Franklin
• Guillotines and Grand Complications: Marie Antoinette’s Breguet
• Time Delivered to Your Door: The Belville Chronometer
• The Most Famous Clock in the World: Big Ben
• The Missed Train Changed Time: Meridian Time
• Time Flies: The Cartier Santos
• The First Sports Watch: The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso
• The Most Expensive Watch in the World: The Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication
• Jet Set Go: Rolex GMT-Master
• The Moon’s Official Wristwatch: Omega Speedmaster
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Picture Credits
• Copyright