Surname 2
different activities can be achieved. The mechanical clock brought order to, first, the monasteries
and then the society as a whole. People could allocate and be accountable for time spent, which
helped in scholarship and developing more advanced solutions.
This concept of time was passed on to the Renaissance, the predecessor of the modern
era. Time as an infinite and divisible concept helped establish a sense of personal responsibility,
albeit corresponding with society’s increased complexity because of the rise of schools,
governments, transport, and employment that encouraged people to use their time in this fashion.
As one of the first mechanical inventions, the mechanical clock helped institutions and people to
allocate and account for their time, which led to even more inventions and scholarship, a ripple
effect that has improved technologies (timekeeping included), albeit maintaining such a culture
(Álvarez).
How Precision in Accurate Timekeeping Affected Human Behavior in Both Europe and The
US
Although the mechanical clock was a major improvement to timekeeping, working well
for monasteries and surrounding communities, it struggled with reliability and precision for very
many years. However, as already stated, the cultural revolution that came after the invention of
the mechanical clock helped develop a personal sense of duty and responsibility, which allowed
people to delve deeper into scholarship and innovation (Bradbury and Collette). The invention of
the pendulum was a major improvement in the operation of the mechanical clock, improving on
its failures in terms of precision in timekeeping. Precision was achieved in the pendulum clock
because it took the exact amount of time to move from one side to the other, creating the most
uniform timekeeping device.