tidssættere

Tidssættere is the Danish term for people or mechanisms responsible for setting and maintaining correct time. Historically, the role encompassed clock masters, church bell ringers, and officials who regulated daily life by the clock.

In medieval and early modern Europe, towns depended on local astronomers or priests to determine solar time, and the time was signaled by bells or cannons. With the rise of railways and standardized time, municipalities and states established official time authorities, and the term tidssætter appears in historical records to designate those responsible for ensuring clocks and bells were synchronized.

Today, the role is largely fulfilled by metrology institutes, network time protocols, and IT administrators who manage time servers and timestamping in digital systems. The concept persists in ways such as clock synchronization, time stamping in records, and time signals disseminated via radio, GPS, and the Internet.

In contemporary Danish usage, tidssættere is rarely used outside historical or descriptive contexts. When referring to the role today, Danes more commonly use phrases such as timekeeper, clockmaster, or time administrator, while tidssættere may appear in discussions of museums or historical accounts.

See also: timekeeping, metrology, chronometry, UTC, NTP, time stamping.