COLLECTING AND WRITING THE HISTORY OF HOROLOGY

Abstract

Abstract The chapter offers a historiographical survey of horology showing how the investigation of its past developed from general histories of everyday objects. It discusses how horology became a field of its own from the mid-eighteenth century, thanks to Classical and post-Classical texts made available since the Renaissance. Particular attention is paid to the wide-ranging but never published text of Claude Raillard, while the self-serving ends of other, apparently objective, histories are revealed. The role of collecting in stimulating research into the history of horology is examined, and the integration of material evidence as an essential part of the subject in the course of the twentieth century.