>
> Up to the fourteenth century in Europe there were the same nunmber of
> nightime hours winter and summer. For example, the winter night would
> consist of 12 hours and the winter summer would consist of 12 hours. The
> length of each hour however would differ. During the winter, nightime
> hours were much longer, daytime hours were much shorter, in order to
> keep the total number of hours unchanged.
>
> The reason for this in medieval europe was that hours were measured by
> their content, not their content by the hours. Time was determined by
> action, rather than being an 'objective' fact independent of the
> activities which filled it. Even when the mechanical clock was invented
> hours continued to be changeable, measured by their content rather than
> being a measure of their content.
>
> (The content was primarily the content of the Church day.)
>
> Then in anumber of cities in western europe workshops appeare staffed by
> wage workers, and in a few of these wages began to be paid by the hour.
> The mechaical clock was used to measure these hours. But the older
> variable hours continued to be used in monasteries, churches, and in
> general in rural areas. Mechanical clocks arrivbed in China but there
> were used merely as curiosities, for in China, as in ancient Greece and
> Rome and everyplace else time;, time was not a measure of its content
> but rather time was measured by its content.
>
> In other words, time is not an obbective entity but is a social product.
>
> I'll explore some other day some of the implications of this fact.
>
> Carrol
>
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>
Excellent essay on this, from one of the 20th centuries best historians.
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~salaff/Thompson.pdf