IN 1911, THE ENGINEER Frederick Winslow Taylor – the man who gave us the modern workplace with its managers, targets, obsession with metrics and job descriptions – published his Principles of Scientif

Measuring time using the Earth’s rotation was always an imprecise business, so now we do it using the ‘tick’ of an atom

Maya artefacts are something you’d probably expect to find in an archaeological site in Mexico or hidden in ruins buried deep in the Central American jungle. A startling number of them turn up in Euro

It’s easy to get downhearted during these long weeks in the dead of winter, but all sorts of little treats can pop up to help us through. A wet day only six hours long doesn’t have a lot to offer to t

Many of the most dramatic cosmic events take the form of explosions, from asteroid impacts to the Big Bang itself. Here are some of the most spectacular examples

The sticky motion of a chronometric speedometer needle is one of the eccentricities of pre-1960s bikes. Here’s how to keep the needle moving and recording the right speed