You might find me on an aqueduct in Linlithgow or a flyover in Canning Town. I could be at a clock tower in Kuala Lumpur or an underpass in Chicago. I will always be exploring.

I am a writer and curator. My latest book, About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks, is out now with Penguin (UK) and W. W. Norton (US), with several translation editions available or due soon. It is ambitious, wide-ranging and provocative, and is based on fifteen years of research into why civilizations make clocks — and why we should understand them better.

Jonathan Meades wrote that my first book was “an engrossing and eccentric slice of London history ... constantly surprising, crisply written, beautifully detailed.” Patricia Fara in Nature said that “Rooney has the rare gift of combining the obsessiveness of an academic sleuth with the fluency of a detective novelist”.

Whatever subject I am working on, I really get under its skin. I live it, breathe it, and explore its material remains. I care as much about fine detail as the big picture — both are crucial in a good story. The history of time, cities, technology and engineering is the story of us, and I care deeply about it.

Museum career

I joined the Science Museum, London, as a 21-year-old trainee in 1995 and have spent my life in museums ever since. At the Royal Observatory Greenwich, from 2004 to 2009, I was Curator of Timekeeping. Returning to the Science Museum in 2009 I became Curator of Transport before ending up as Keeper of Technologies and Engineering. I went freelance in 2018.

I was Lead Curator of the Science Museum’s RIBA-award-winning mathematics gallery, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects with a team led by Bidisha Sinha, which opened in 2016. The project was directed by Karen Livingstone, who said that “David is a curator of great intelligence and flair, one of the best I have enjoyed the privilege of working with. He has a rare breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise which he is able to translate with ease and communicate in an accessible way.”

“An exemplar project”

The mathematics gallery enjoyed widespread media acclaim, from Waldemar Januszczak in the Sunday Times and Mark Hudson in the Daily Telegraph to Jonathan Morrison in The Times and Will Gompertz on BBC News.

Will Gompertz said that “the imaginative and instructive displays were put together by the Science Museum’s David Rooney. He has taken a calculated risk by privileging story-telling over pure maths, which won’t please everyone but I think — on balance — is a good decision.”

I did this because I wanted to reach everyone, not just those already into the subject — and it seems that this struck a chord with visitors, as the gallery has been hugely popular.

The RIBA award judges said that “This pioneering project has vastly increased visitor numbers ... and is an exemplar project in how architecture can be central to successful curatorial development”.

Affiliations

I have been a research associate at the Science Museum since 2018. I joined the council of the Antiquarian Horological Society in 2009 and currently chair its electrical timekeeping group. I am a Liveryman and Past Steward of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers and formerly sat on the management committee of the Clockmakers’ Museum, the oldest clock and watch museum in the world. From 2016 to 2022, I was a research associate at Royal Holloway’s geography department, where I studied for my doctorate on the political history of urban traffic.

Contact

If you would like to get in touch, please use this form or email david@davidrooney.uk. I would be delighted to hear from you.