Clockwork Universe: German Clocks and Automata 1550-1650

About this book

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 Institutions National Museum of History and Technology offers the most comprehensive examination of the German Renaissance clock ever undertaken. From the founding of the clockmakers guilds to the eventual shifting of the crafts supremacy from German-speaking Central Europe to Holland and England after the Thirty Years War it both defines and conclusively treats a significant episode of horological history.