Student Research Guide WQ24/ History and Impacts of Clocks and Timekeeping

• There were many ways of timekeeping before clocks were invented. Even though they were not too accurate, they did the job. The introduction of mechanical clocks into society made it so that people could coordinate meetings and activities and measure time accurately.

• Churches held a lot of power in terms of timekeeping; they rang bells seven times a day for different times of prayer, and people in the town would often follow those as well. 

• There was a pushback from the church at the use of mechanical clocks because it was considered "unnatural." The previous timekeeping techniques relied on the use of nature (sunlight, water, etc). 

• Clocks began spreading into more towns in the form of clock towers. At first, they did not have dials, they announced the time by hour with bells. These clocks slowly began to improve as time went on and were made more accurate. 

• The transition from church time and natural time to mechanical time was a power shift from the religious institutions to the working class. 

Advice for future researchers:

My advice for future researchers is to try searching for sources in multiple databases, because this subject is not written or talked about much and sources are hard to find. There are not a lot of sources to choose from, but if you go through multiple databases and try different techniques, you can most likely come up with a good list of sources to use. A lot of the sources are EBooks, so be prepared to skim around and look for what you need. 

Reflection on research experience:

The research for this subject went well but was a long and difficult process. The most difficult thing about it is the lack of resources in all types of sources. There are hardly any videos, podcasts, or articles about the subject, and most of the information lies in books or EBooks and musuem websites. The best part of researching this topic was learning about the interesting history behind clocks and how people reacted to them. I was interested about the topic the more I researched it, and it did not cease to intrigue me. All in all, this is a fascinating research topic.