Clockwork Universe: German Clocks and Automata, 1550-1650

by K. Maurice (Editor), Otto Mayr (Editor)

Depicts the golden age of German clockmaking, 1550-1650, in fourteen contributions from European and American scholars. There are over 200 illustrations and technical drawings, detailed physical descriptions of the finest clocks, automata and mechanical celestial globes surviving from the time. This volume, along with the exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History and Technology, offers the most comprehensive examination of the German Renaissance clock ever undertaken. From the founding of the clockmaker's guilds to the eventual shifting of the craft's supremacy from German-speaking Central Europe to Holland and England after the Thirty Year's War, it both defines and conclusively treats a significant episode of horological history.

Genres: Nonfiction

321 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1980