A Brief History of Timekeeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks. This item is unavailable.A Brief History of Timekeeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks

‘Entertaining and engrossing’ Sean Carroll

Press the snooze button on your alarm once too often and you soon remember the importance of good timekeeping. That need to tell the time connects you to over five thousand years of human history, from the first solstice markers at Newgrange to quartz crystal oscillating in your watch today. Science underpins time: measuring the movement of Sun, Earth and Moon, and unlocking the mysteries of quantum mechanics and relativity theory – the key to ultra-precise atomic clocks.

Yet time is also socially decided: the Gregorian calendar we use today came out of fraught politics, while the ancient Maya used sophisticated astronomical observations to produce a calendar system unlike any other. In his quirky and accessible style, Chad Orzel reveals the wondrous physics that makes time something we can set, measure and know.

Chad Orzel is an associate professor at the department of physics and astronomy at Union College. He has written for Forbes, the Daily Mail and Physics World, and has spoken at numerous TED talks. His previous books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Niskayuna, New York.