Punching the clock

Punching the clock was first implemented in the 1700s by Josiah Wedgewood. Who is credited for kicking off the industrial revolution in Europe. He is also credited with implementing door-to-door sales, buy one get one free, the money-back guarantee, and catalogs.

This was only possible because of the pocket watch. Without keeping track of time, how could you get a warehouse of factory workers to show up at the same time? When Part B is waiting for Part A, you can see how important is to organize people to do their part to make mass production work at efficient levels.

But the pocket watch didn’t also kick off the assembly line, it also changed the way we think of time. No longer did time pass. It became spent, leveraged, and used. Time became a more apparent finite resource. It shouldn’t be a surprise to discover that time is actually the most used noun in the English language.