On Time

An illustrated history of the ways Americans have measured, used, and thought about time over the past 300 years. Author Carlene Stephens curates an permanent exhibit of the same name at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and reveals the stories behind the history.

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This text is based on a popular, permanent exhibition of the same name at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History at the Behring Center in Washington, DC, which is visited by six million people annually. The exhibit is curated by author Carlene Stephens, and here she includes the colourful stories of inventors and entrepreneurs who introduced the technologies by which we measure our lives, from the first modern timepieces in the early 18th century to the invention of standardized time in the late 19th century and the digitization of time in the late 20th century.