User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers

Chapter 1: The Advent of Technology Consumption

21 Chapter 1 The Advent of Technology Consumption Today we take for granted the many technologies that keep track of time: not only our clocks and watches but thermostats, microwave ovens, alarm systems, personal computers, and mobile phones. Timekeepers are everywhere, but once we learn as children to tell time these machines become part of the background of our lives, and as users we do not think of them as challenging. When inexpensive mechanical clocks first arrived in the early 1800s, however, they could seem baffling and complicated. It was not that clocks were a new invention; mechanical timekeepers had appeared independently in both Europe and China in the thirteenth century, and the colonizers of North America had brought clocks along with the knowledge of how to make them at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But at the start of the nineteenth century, few Americans owned such devices or the miniaturized versions called watches. Timekeepers were still costly, being by nature intricate devices that had to be painstakingly constructed by skilled craftsmen. A 1799 survey in Connecticut, a state heavy with resident clockmakers, revealed that only one out of every twelve households possessed a clock, usually a tallcase version designed to accommodate the long pendulums that ensured accuracy.1 Colonial Americans may not have owned many clocks or watches, but they highly valued the commodity we call time and possessed a keen awareness of its value. Puritans in New England, following more general Protestant thinking, believed time was God-given. Human beings were divinely granted a moment on earth and it was incumbent on them to not waste it, to manage it well.2 Not surprisingly, Puritan preachers timed their own sermons using an hourglass that they placed on the pulpit so it 22 user unfriendly was visible to the congregation. If they did not finish their remarks before the sand in the glass had run out, preachers would tell their audience they were going to “take another glass.” Then they would simply turn the hourglass over and continue to talk, ignoring the irony inherent in timing themselves while making up their own rules about time. Clearly, neither Puritan preachers nor colonial congregations had yet become slaves to clock-driven punctuality; that would come later in the nineteenth century, facilitated by the mass ownership of mechanical clocks and watches and by the railroads, which regulated their train schedules and timetables on precisely kept clock time.3 Most colonial Americans approximated the time of day from the sun, by reading the shadows cast by trees or buildings on the ground; some built outdoor sundials for this purpose. By observing when the sun was highest in the sky, people also knew when to break for lunch, noon being the most important moment between daybreak and dusk. Those who lived in towns and villages had access to mechanical time in the form of public clocks, mounted on the steeples of churches or the towers of town halls, mills, and factories. They could read the large faces of such clocks at a considerable distance, and from an even greater remove they could hear a clock’s bells, which chimed hourly and usually every half hour or even fifteen minutes. People regulated their lives by these clocks, heading to church for worship, home from the fields for the noon meal, or to the mill or factory at the beginning of the morning shift. Given the strong cultural imperative not to waste time and the widespread understanding of clock time in preindustrial America, it is understandable that when the price of mechanical timekeepers fell, consumers purchased the devices for their own homes. As part of the wider industrial revolution affecting manufacturing and transportation between 1800 and 1850, both the design of clocks and their means of fabrication changed dramatically. Clocks became affordable for almost everybody. Inventor-entrepreneurs such as Eli Terry of Plymouth, Connecticut, transformed the production and assembly of clock components from a skilled handcraft into an industrial process. In his factory, Terry harnessed water power to mechanize the making of gears, pinions, and other clock parts, at first using wood rather than the traditional brass. The machines he devised could be operated by workers with limited skill The Advent of Technology Consumption 23 and training. Terry also invented various gauges and measuring devices that allowed a relatively unskilled laborer to produce parts to exacting tolerances so they could...