From the atomic clock to the movies, Simon Garfield tells us it’s all a matter of time
From the origin of the atomic clock to the history of the timetable, here’s what we learned from Timekeepers Terra Arnone
TAKEAWAYS
Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with Time By Simon Garfield Canongate Books 368 pp; $36.50
Simon Garfield has spent what I would imagine to be many, many hours writing books, and so it’s somewhat fitting that his 18th work of non- fiction be about keeping, clocking and allotting time itself. Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with Time is neither ode nor criticism of our modern obsession with efficiency; instead, it’s Garfield’s often-personal musings on moments themselves – what they mean, how they’re made, and why we care at all.
Here’s what we learned:
1 Cranial calibration. Time is a funny, fickle thing, but really it isn’t at all: given thought, time itself is just the movement of a clock, and our perceptions of it rarely have much to do with any rigid ticking, tocking, or bell-tolling. But everyone knows the feeling of time seeming to slow down or speed up depending on situation: deadline hours might pass as seconds, while waiting room lines feel like an eternity lived twice over. These perceptions are in fact physiological and, it turns out, more or less common to us all, a result of the brain’s amygdalae – nerve bundles in its temporal lobe – laying down memories in greater detail, each flash elongating itself to accommodate a more vivid perception. Garfield offers (rather generously, in a story from his own modest oeuvre) the sensation of falling as one keen example: when face meets ground, only a few short seconds pass between, but because the amygdalae has judged that moment an important memory, splicing each fraction for long- term storage, the time is perceived in considerably longer terms. Tucked away as a painful lesson, maybe, or wince-worthy humiliation in some idle moment years later.
2 Common counting. No halffunny witticism adequately introduces so stark a fact: time, as a philosophy, is the most commonly used noun in the English language. This, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a result of the word’s wide and endless application: as a concept ( e. g. “recovery time” or “reading time”), as a marker (“on time”), or new noun altogether (“pastime”), among many, many more. In OED’s amalgamation of newspapers, books, magazines, blogs and government documents, the word reigned supreme. Second place reveals our decidedly more selfish predilections: person.
3 Screen time. Imagine a silent film. In your mind’s eye, as most, the screen is likely projecting something of a jerky stop- motion – each character’s movement not quite right for real life but enough to captivate and convince in the time they were popular, at least. It turns out dated tech is only half the excuse behind that spastic tremor you’re imagining; the rest, Garfield says, can be attributed to artistic license. Recorded on reel, silent films were inscribed to motion picture by handcranked camera and shown postproduction through similar invention, using a hand-cranked projection device to transmit on screen. So the hop-skip-start screening you see is often the result of naturally inconsistent hand cranking.
Bonus: Human error aside, it turns out movie magic’s savviest businessmen also found ways to monetize the film’s mortal mechanics. In busy times, when lengthy queues hindered high efficiency, projectionists cranked double-time to get audiences in and out more quickly, allowing more turnover and additional screenings; conversely, on slow days, crank operators gave their wrists a rest, limping along at leisure.
4 Tick- tock, atomic clock. In 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a highly secular if not somewhat obscure academic resource, found entirely unintentional fame. As atomic power became the talking point of America’s postwar years, the Bulletin’s content shifted naturally to cover international nuclear technology and the policy-making that endangered or kept safe a country’s respective population. In June 1947, attuned to its new and growing readership, the Bulletin was to feature for the first time in its existence a professionally rendered front page. Art directors debated their options, oscillating between something so bold and simple as the chemical symbol for Uranium to other ideas decidedly more striking. In the end, artist Martyl Langsdorf (wife of physicist Alexander Langsdorf ) crafted a creative vision that would be come the tick-talking point of readers the world over. As of June 1947 onward, each issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists would be printed on the backdrop of a giant clock showing a time just several minutes shy of midnight. The moment itself was arbitrary, chosen to illustrate an imprecise clock-stroke in evening’s darkest hour, but the image’s effects were immediate: already spooked by growing threat of international nuclear action, Bulletin readers didn’t see Cinderella’s clock so much as Doomsday’s warning. Over time, the clock moved to represent the modern nuclear threat; in 1949, after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapon, the hand advanced to three minutes before midnight. In 1953, it gained another minute, after both the United States and Soviet Union began testing thermonuclear weapons; as of 2016, the time was changed on 21 occasions, and these days nuclear destruction is only one factor on its clock face.
5 Time, tabled. While time is associated mostly with Swiss precision, it was the Brits who first established a stable set of posted deadlines by which train passengers could travel, otherwise known as a timetable. In January 1831, a year after the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened for regional travel, engineers developed a locomotive science so precise it could predict the average length of a journey, accounting for cross- traffic ( and, as was common in those early days, accidents) as well as overall travel times along the way. First-class carriages, allotted additional coal and a more efficient engine, tended toward the quicker side: just about two hours between each city for those willing to pay 5 shillings a trip. However, the timetable fell victim to its own best-intended precision as technology improved and the railways travelled farther; when the railway system combined lines in 1839, extending to distant cities such as Birmingham and Lancashire, passengers and attendants found that clocks in each place often read different times – in 1839, a universal clock (and communication technology widespread and effective enough to relay its readings) hadn’t yet been invented.