The Wonders of Time

Jan Bielecki is a Polish-Swedish illustrator and designer living in London. He mainly works with children's books and has illustrated fiction, picture books and non-fiction. Some of the topics he has covered include the human anatomy, wrestling trolls, the scope of the universe and slimy monsters. Emily Akkermans is Curator of Time at Royal Museums Greenwich. She manages the horology collection, which has a unique relationship to the history of the Royal Observatory and close links to astronomy, navigation, science and society. After studying horology at The Vakschool in Schoonhoven, she specialised in the restoration of antique clocks during an apprenticeship in Breda, the Netherlands. She then completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Conservation and Restoration at the University of Antwerp, focusing on conservation techniques specific to metal objects. After graduating, Emily moved to London to take up an internship in metals conservation at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. She participated in an AHRC-funded doctoral partnership between the National Maritime Museum and the University of Edinburgh, on a project that combined maritime history, horology, scientific instruments, and history of science and technology. Her final PhD thesis looked at the ways in which chronometers were used on board early nineteenth-century voyages of exploration and how they relate to other navigational practices.

1: WHAT IS TIME?
2: TIME AND THE UNIVERSE


1: THE BEGINNING OF TIME
2: THE SOLAR SYSTEM
3: TIME IN SPACE
4: MOON AND THE STARS


3: NATURAL TIME


1: THE SHAPE OF TIME
2: DIVIDING THE YEAR
3: BUILDING BLOCKS OF TIME
4: BODY CLOCKS


4: MEASURING TIME


1: EARLY TIMEKEEPING
2: MECHANICAL TIME
3: DIVIDING THE DAY
4: TIME REDEFINED


5: COORDINATING TIME


1: WHAT'S THE TIME?
2: A SPEEDY WORLD
3: AGREEING TIME
4: TIME ZONES


6: WONDERS OF TIME


1: LIFETIMES
2: THE GOOD TIMES
3: THE WONDERS OF TIME
4: AROUND THE WORLD IN 7 CLOCKS


7: GLOSSARY
8: FIND OUT MORE
9: INDEX