I've been working within earshot of Brisbane City Hall, with the sounds of the clock tower punctuating my days. The old timekeeper has quickly burrowed into my subconscious, and until a recent conversation with a colleague, I hadn't given much thought to the purpose or the impact of its chimes.
Contemplating Brisbane's clock tower reminded me of a lecture I once attended on the economic history of Europe. The lecturer sketched a line of economic development through history and proclaimed the mechanical clock to be one of the most revolutionary inventions in economics. Unpacking his arguments against the backdrop of City Hall's clock tower has reminded me of the benefits of measuring, managing and capturing the value of time.
It is hard to imagine life without the precise understanding of time that we have today. But for most of recorded history, people's life and work have been dictated by seasonal rhythms and defined by the period from sunup to sundown. The farmer would know how much of his field could be ploughed before noon, and the King would estimate how far his army could march in a day. Early empires, who understood the value of time for coordination and planning, advanced the concept of timekeeping by using water clocks and sundials. Water clocks featured particularly sophisticated designs, although they were not especially useful in the sub-zero temperatures of the European winter. Sundials interestingly performed the role of timekeeper for clock towers before the invention of the mechanical clock. Tower bells were manually struck at sundial-based unequal hours, but this arrangement was easily derailed by a lazy bell ringer or a cloudy day.
The mechanical clock was the response to the need for a reliable, precise, and commonly understood measure of time. An invention of the late 1300s, mechanical time was first communicated through the clock tower bells chiming on the hour for all those in earshot. Chronicler Galvano Fiamma conveyed the value of the equinoctial clock (i.e., a clock marking hours of equal length) when in 1335, he remarked the San Gottardo Bell tower in Milan, "distinguishes one hour from another, which is of greatest use to men of every degree."'
The mechanical clock allowed the stone mason to know how many stones he could lay in an hour and estimate if he had time to stop for an ale before dinner. For the medieval city dweller, the chime on the hour set the rhythm of urban life. A segmented day was well suited to urban industry and freed the worker from the sunup, sundown workday by allowing for a diversity of daily schedules. Clock towers transformed the socioeconomic fabric of Europe by reshaping our understanding of time.
The mechanical clock spread relatively rapidly across the towns and cities of 14th-century Europe. Its adoption was driven primarily by the church and municipal groups like guilds. A clock tower was a substantial investment. They were complex machines requiring specialised craftsmen and frequent maintenance. The question of why the clock tower spread through Europe is a topic of ongoing debate. The 16th-century writer Franciosi Rabelais, remarked the mechanical clock was a symbol of a thriving town: "a city without bells is like a blind man without a stick." Others propose that demand was driven by industry and the growing merchant class. Either way, the proliferation of clock towers coincided with economic growth and profound socio-economic transformation.
There are two reasons these clocks fostered economic advancement. First, as economists always remind us, we need to consider transaction costs. Transactions require standard units of exchange. The units of time established by these clocks were a common metric and a shared way to structure the day. This shared understanding of time created the conditions for smoother transactions and organised activity. Markets for example could run on time, and meetings could take place at a time slot other than dawn, dusk, or noon. An independent, standard unit of time also facilitated dispute resolution: because a specified, qualified time left nothing open to interpretation. Interestingly time fraud was a serious concern in the Middle Ages. So much so, the clock wardens of Augsburg swore an oath to regulate and guard the clock tower. As a shared metric and a common language, the clock tower range shaped communities.
Personally, I am most interested in the relationship between the telling of time and the concept of productivity. Mechanical time was an empowering tool that allowed us to schedule and understand our day, and quantify and exchange our time. The availability of accurate and routine units of time transformed the way both individuals and organisations could think about work. Crucially, time could act as a measure of input, or a measure of sacrifice. The metric of time offered a better understanding of process, enabling individuals and employers to optimise their results and maximise the value they create. In other words the metric of time laid the foundation for our contemporary understanding of productivity.
By extension, we might also consider time to be a way to measure value. Although not all time spent is valuable. The measurement of time comes with a trapping: the perceived value of busyness. Time can readily become a language of busyness, rather than results or outputs. Just as the medieval labourer may have spent time digging a trench that no one used, and now the 21st-century worker might write a report that no one reads, time spent is not valuable in itself.
I should also acknowledge the type of meaningful change that resulted from the clock tower doesn't happen overnight. A recent paper on the diffusion and uptake of the mechanical timepiece concluded cities that adopted the clock tower measured higher rates of growth, over the ensuing three centuries. Economists label the precise-time-telling mechanical clocks a 'general purpose technology'- meaning technology whose effect is broad and pervasive. General purpose technology commonly has a long tail of impacts. The concept of time defined by clock towers for example, needed to be embedded culturally before it could influence process or deliver productivity gains. An interesting historic example of cultural adaptation is the original move towards time-rate wages. This development was revolutionary, and for some historians, the pivotal factor in the decline of serfdom and the feudal system. A letter from a 14th-century merchant working away from home shows the way we think and talk about time hasn’t changed. He complains, "I don't have any time, it is the twenty-first hour, and I have had nothing to eat or drink”.
As with any general-purpose technology, time is what we make of it. We are certainly obsessed with time. We treasure it, we struggle to find it, and we wonder where it goes. We have access to more time-telling devices than ever before. I can tell you how many minutes I spent on my phone today, how long it took me to get to work and how many hours I’ve spent in Teams meetings this week. But are we informed by time?
For me, the clock tower is not a relic of centuries past but a reminder to act purposefully when dealing in our most precious commodity. The power of time lies in the insights it offers.
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About the Author
Riley Gardiner
Riley works at the nexus of people and process to deliver creative solutions that drive meaningful change. With a background in economics and anthropology, Riley engages with both the technical and human elements of business transformation. For Riley, data-driven insights are most valuable when grounded in frontline observations. “Culture is the place where conversations begin, beliefs are formed, and attitudes take shape.” Riley is passionate about the role of culture in propagating environments of operational excellence.