#Mechanical clock manual#

The findings support the view that GPT’s can have a strong impact on economic growth. The study finds significant growth effects based on the diffusion rate of mechanical clocks. Our research shows that public mechanical clocks had a big impact on growth in the places that were early adopters of the new technology. This statement has in the meantime been known as the famous “Solow Paradox” and widely discussed by several world-class economists and also nowadays both sign and size of the contribution of hi-tech machine on economic growth is still unclear both at micro and macro level. In a 1987 article published in the New York Times, Noble Prize winning economist Robert Solow described a ‘productivity paradox’ that highlights that the American productivity slowdown in the 1970s and 1980s coincides with the adoption of computers and he noted that “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”. Unfortunately, the answer is not that clear. This relationship has become highly relevant over the last decades in the Western World where growth mainly can be achieved by the accumulation of knowledge and the improvement or introduction of new technologies. The introduction of clocks and a precise way of measuring time is also linked to the impact of a new General Purpose Technology (henceforth GPT) for a society. This fundamental question is not new and has already been discussed by social scientists such as Marx, Sombart, and Weber, but it has never been analysed quantitatively and empirically tested. In a recent paper we study the impact of the spread of these first public mechanical clocks on the economic growth and development of Western European cities and regions in the long run. In this way, the clocks were publicly accessible and easy for everyone to understand and the knowledge for enjoying this technology was very simple: a person only had to listen to the chime and have the ability to count.

The day was typically divided into two units of twelve, and the bells rang accordingly as many times. Thus, early mechanical clocks did not have a dial, but only worked with a bell. These clocks were typically built on church towers or on the communal tower of the town, and they were mechanical devices that produced a weight-driven acoustic signal every hour. Market openings and activities started with the sun rise and typically ended at noon when the sun was at its zenith, while a labor day was as long as the sun was up and pay by the hour did not exist.ĭifferent attitudes on punctuality started by the late Middle Ages, when first public mechanical clocks were introduced and spread in European cities. Until the late Middle Ages people had to rely on sun or water clocks which did not play any role for basic life and business activities.

However looking at the evolution of mankind, the concept of a precise measurement of time is surprisingly rather recent. Furthermore, improving coordination and reducing transaction costs are so basic and self-evident that the underlying need of a common precise time measurement gets almost forgotten. The measurement of time allows monitoring and coordinating production processes and it is crucial to improve labor efficiency. Precise measurement of time is fundamental to schedule business meetings exactly on the minute and the hour, to have opening hours for retail business, to synchronise exchange activities on financial markets. Such a statement is even more important for today’s business activities.

#Mechanical clock manual#

“Remember that time is money.” Already in 1748 Benjamin Franklin underlined in a short contribution to a business manual that the temporal aspect is a pivotal variable for the economy. Salisbury Cathedral clock (the oldest surviving functional mechanical clock in the world), © Copyright by Hywel Williams under a CC-BY-SA-2.0 licence