Every medieval town we saw on our European trip had a cathedral and a clock tower.  In one of the towns, probably Bern, I realized that time used to be a monopoly of the church.  They had the bell in the church steeple and since nobody had a clock when the priest pulled the bell to signal that it was noon, it was noon.  It was until the late medieval era when civic governments got clocks and towers to put them in that the church lost its monopoly.  Interesting.  What monopolies exist today in the background that we don’t see because they are part of the fabric of our society?

If your interested in the beginning of the Renaissance read The Swerve  by Steven Greenblatt a nonfiction account of the rediscovery of Lucretius that reads like fiction.

One more time question if you have time: Why does an hour have sixty minutes around the world?  We use different languages distance and weight measures but time measurements seem to be universal.  Why?