Einstein's Clocks And Poincare's Maps

At the beginning of the twentieth century, both Einstein and Poincaré were working towards a new scientific and philosophical world view - relativity.

Their quest for a way to synchronise far-flung clocks was grounded in the necessities of economics, the reflections of philosophy, and the upheavals of physics. Co-ordinated clocks were essential; railway schedulers and telegraphers needed them, so did map-makers. Conferences lobbied synchronisation as essential to uphold world order.

From his position at the Bern patent office, the young Albert Einstein watched the parade of inventions that supported this movement. Did it have a bearing on his formulation of relativity? Were the clocks and trains of his revolutionary 1905 paper made of steel, signals and steam, not only metaphorical fantasy?

Meanwhile, his chief rival, Henri Poincaré, was engaged in the world of industrial and political synchronisation, as part of the Bureau of Longitude, establishing precise coordinates of French colonies and outposts in Africa, indeed all over the world.

This book is a dramatically new account of these great scientists' central ideas about the meaning of time, telling a story drawn from unutilised archives, rarely seen photographs, forgotten patents, colonial reports and neglected papers, to give us new insights into the history and possibilities of science.