Mumford, Marx and Time

["Harry Veeder" <eo200@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"The mechanical clock dates from the 14th Century... The machine that
mechanized time did more than regulate the activities of the day: it
synchronized human reactions, not with the rising and setting sun but with
the indicated movements of the clock's hands: so it brought exact
measurement and temporal control into every activity, by setting an
independent standard whereby the whole day could be laid out and subdivided.

"The measurement of space and time became an integral part of the system of
control that Western man spread over the planet. Karl Marx was one of the
first to understand the place of the clock as the archetypal model for all
later machines: in a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1863 he observed that
'the clock is the first automatic machine applied to practical purposes; the
whole theory of production and regular motion was developed through it'."

Mumford, Lewis - Technics and Human Development, 1967.