-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Michael Kammen, Marking Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life. By Alexis McCrossen (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. xvi plus 255 pp. $45.00), Journal of Social History, Volume 48, Issue 3, Spring 2015, Pages 720–723, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shu038
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
When the Romanesque post office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. was completed in 1899 with its landmark clock tower, one senator described it as “a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill.” Its stolid girth and imposing height were symptomatic of a national trend at the fin de siècle: impressive public buildings with devices intended to proclaim the time, preferably with a wide-winged eagle perched and poised with nationalistic pride. That happenstance conveys the core of a spritely book by Alexis McCrossen, who teaches American history at Southern Methodist University. Her subtitle might well have included the word ‘public’ to modify ‘clock’ because personal or family time is essentially an epiphenomenon in this fine project which fundamentally spans the late eighteenth century until the early twentieth when the democratization of watches and the wireless transmission of time signals (1903) made individuals and groups less dependent on highly visible public clocks.
