Special Feature: Ventricles Podcast
Episode 377
Ventricles Episode 1: Telling Time
featuring Sara Schechner and Avner Wishnitzer
The Ottoman History Podcast is featuring episode one of Ventricles, a new podcast about interesting topics in science and technology, past and present. Ventricles is written and produced by OHP contributor Shireen Hamza for the Science, Religion and Culture Program at Harvard Divinity School, and also features past episodes of OHP. Episode one is about the history of timekeeping:
How have humans kept track of time? What technologies have they developed to tell time, and how have they been influenced by religious and scientific cultures? In this episode, Dr. Sara Schechner, a historian of astronomy and an artist who has made sundials herself, speaks about the history of timekeeping, and how timekeeping technologies have shaped people’s sense of time. We also hear from Dr. Avner Wishnitzer about how some people’s sense of time changed with the introduction of modern institutions, creating new “temporal cultures.”
How have humans kept track of time? What technologies have they developed to tell time, and how have they been influenced by religious and scientific cultures? In this episode, Dr. Sara Schechner, a historian of astronomy and an artist who has made sundials herself, speaks about the history of timekeeping, and how timekeeping technologies have shaped people’s sense of time. We also hear from Dr. Avner Wishnitzer about how some people’s sense of time changed with the introduction of modern institutions, creating new “temporal cultures.”
Stream via SimpleCast
Contributor Bios
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Sara Schechner is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University. She is a historian of science, specializing in material culture and the history of astronomy. |
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Avner Wishnitzer is a faculty member at the Department of Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. His main field of research is the cultural history of the late Ottoman period. |
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Projit Bihari Mukharji is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently at work on a history of human difference and race in 20th century South Asia. |
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Shireen Hamza is a doctoral student in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses broadly on the history of science and medicine in the Islamicate Middle Ages, especially in the Indian Ocean world. |
Credits
Special Feature: Ventricles Podcast, Telling Time
Release Date: 8 September 2018
Recording Location: Harvard Divinity School
Bibliography and Image: Courtesy of Sara Schechner
Audio editing by Shireen Hamza
Music: Special thanks to Tom Roush for use of his song, “My Grandfather’s Clock” and The Overseas Ensemble, a collaboration between composer Paed Conca and Sarigama, for use of their music. Also, thank you to the Ottoman History Podcast for use of their episode “Time and Temporal Culture in the Ottoman Empire," and for featuring Ventricles!
Release Date: 8 September 2018
Recording Location: Harvard Divinity School
Bibliography and Image: Courtesy of Sara Schechner
Audio editing by Shireen Hamza
Music: Special thanks to Tom Roush for use of his song, “My Grandfather’s Clock” and The Overseas Ensemble, a collaboration between composer Paed Conca and Sarigama, for use of their music. Also, thank you to the Ottoman History Podcast for use of their episode “Time and Temporal Culture in the Ottoman Empire," and for featuring Ventricles!
Select Bibliography
Borst, Arno. The Ordering of Time from the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer, trans. Andrew Winnard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Dohrn-van Rossum, Gerhard. History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. Thomas Dunlap. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Hannah, Robert. Time in Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.
Landes, David S. Revolution in Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Lippincott, Kristin, et. al. The Story of Time. London: Merrell Holberton with the National Maritime Museum, 1999
Parker, R. A. “Ancient Egyptian Astronomy,” in The Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World, ed. F. R. Hodson. London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1974.
Schechner, Sara J. “Astrolabes and Medieval Travel.” In The Art, Science, and Technology of Medieval Travel, 181-210. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
Schechner, Sara J. “European Pocket Sundials for Colonial Use in American Territories.” In How Scientific Instruments Have Changed Hands, Scientific Instruments and Collections, 5:119-170. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
The earliest surviving Egyptian sundial is an L-shaped shadow clock of black schist, from the time of Tuthmosis III (1479–1425 BCE), Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, acc. no. 19744. See: Sarah Symons, “Shadow Clocks and Sloping Sundials of the Egyptian New Kingdom and Late Period: Usage, Development and Structure,” Bulletin of the British Sundial Society 98, no. 3 (1998): 30–36.
Wishnitzer, Avner. Reading clocks, alla Turca: time and society in the late Ottoman Empire. University of Chicago Press, 2015. For the full OHP interview, see: “Time and Temporal Culture in the Ottoman Empire,"
To see Sara's own sundials, see: http://www.altazimutharts.com
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