The history of the clock opens a window on how different cultures have viewed time and on Europe's path to industrialization. How did a time-keeping device affect the growth of crafts guilds and the scientific research that led to the Industrial Revolution? Clocks and Culture is a brief history of the changes wrought by and on Europe over four hundred years due to technological advances in timekeeping and the rise of a time-aware culture. In his introduction, Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, puts this classic book in perspective. 14 b/w illustrations "Cipolla has a sharp eye for the heaven in a grain of sand. He takes a prosaic piece of hardware and uses it as a path into some of the central themes of history.... Imaginative and wide-ranging." ― The Economist "Brilliant.... Demonstrates the economic and technological development by which the continent thrust into the forefront of civilization." ― The Listener Carlo M. Cipolla was the author of Before the Industrial Revolution and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He died in 2000.