Clock towers are way older than the industrial revolution and also occurred in quite a few different societies, so probably not as a general rule. There are a couple in England and France (Salisbury and Beauvais cathedrals) that are 700 years old, and if you include non-mechanical-clock timekeeping devices like sundials and water clocks then you can go back even further. I could imagine that it’s quite possible that there was at least one instance where this was caught and people arranged for some kind of separate public clock, though
Was this the impetus for the town clock?
Clock towers are way older than the industrial revolution and also occurred in quite a few different societies, so probably not as a general rule. There are a couple in England and France (Salisbury and Beauvais cathedrals) that are 700 years old, and if you include non-mechanical-clock timekeeping devices like sundials and water clocks then you can go back even further. I could imagine that it’s quite possible that there was at least one instance where this was caught and people arranged for some kind of separate public clock, though
To add, I believe that town clocks probably also played a continuation of the church bells used to communicate the time to the village/town.
One of the main reasons Church bells and clock bells were so loud was to communicate to the area the current time.
Control.
Cool youtube video describing capitalists controlling clocks to make laborers work for longer hours.