Episode 189: Keeping in Time

Historically Thinking

Beginning in the Middle Ages, western culture became increasingly interested in regulating society through the precise, accurate measurement of time. “By the late fourteenth century,” writes my guest Ken Mondschein in his new book On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping, “mechanical clocks controlled the bells in medieval towns…These regular bells arguably produced a change in time consciousness at a general level: a device for measuring abstract time began to be used to regulate both personal and public activities.” Ultimately, Mondschein argues, without clocks the western world as we know it would not exist. Ken Mondschein is a historian of the middle ages, with a particular interest in technology and the arts of warfare. He is also credentialed as a master of historical fencing by the United States Fencing Coaches' Organization, and is the translator of several historical fencing treatises.