Railway Clocks

Abstract

This chapter explores aspects of time and what we today call transnational law, embodied in the object of the railway clock. Railway clocks acted as crucial elements of networks, to implement and disseminate a standardized time formalized by international law in the nineteenth century. Together, they produced a new temporal regime of strict mechanical conformance to an abstract standard, oriented globally to a single appointed meridian. The chapter demonstrates how transnational law and standardized time have co-produced one another: law was mobilized to create standardized time in the nineteenth century; standardized time has made possible the growth of a particular law globally. Together, they have operated to enable the expansion of capitalist markets and transactional relations globally.