Time Machines: Kairotic Clocks and Automata

Early modern clocks and automata introduced audiences to complex technological and temporal understandings of contemporary life. Historians of technology have argued that mechanical devices brought about a ‘revolution in time;’ by ordering the punctual and self-disciplined lives of mercantile Protestant city dwellers, they ultimately ushered in the modern industrial age of standardization and automation. The aim of this paper is to argue that early modern clockwork cannot just be assessed as modern, secular, and forward moving. While it does make visible and audible a particularly Protestant understanding of time, this temporal mode was not conceived in terms of a straight and regular passage. I will examine a number of mechanical works displayed in Amsterdam that presented the mechanical and measured clock time of chronos in order to alert audiences to time-altering moments of kairos. This type of clockwork was prophetic: by situating current religious and political battles within eschatological time, it presented a particular temporal vision of world history, and urgently demanded critical action in revolutionary times.