Contributors include Luc Berlivet (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), Alberto Cambrosio (McGill University), Sir Iain Chalmers (James Lind Library, Oxford), Nicholas Dodier (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), Michael Donnelly (Bard College), Volker Hess (Humboldt-University), Peter Keating (University of Quebec at Montreal), Ann La Berge (Virginia Tech University), Ilana Löwy (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), Harry M. Marks (Johns Hopkins University), Lion Murard (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Mark Parascandola (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland), Theodore M. Porter (University of California at Los Angeles), Andrea Rusnock (University of Rhode Island), Christiane Sinding (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), and Ulrich Tröhler (Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität).

The historiography of timekeeping is traditionally characterized by a dichotomy between research that investigates the evolution of technical devices on the one hand, and research that is concerned with the examination of the cultures and uses of time on the other hand. Material Histories of Time opens a dialogue between these two approaches by taking monumental clocks, table clocks, portable watches, carriage clocks, and other forms of timekeeping as the starting point of a joint reflection of specialists of the history of horology together with scholars studying the social and cultural history of time. The contributions range from the apparition of the first timekeeping mechanical systems in the Middle Ages to the first evidence of industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries.