Monday
Where did the working week come from? Phil Tinline charts the progression of the Mon-Fri work week over five days, 100 years since it first appeared in a Ford motor factory.
Where did the working week come from? Phil Tinline charts the progression of the Mon-Fri work week over five days, 100 years since it first appeared in a Ford motor factory.
In this first episode Phil shakes off the Sunday scaries and facing the dreaded Monday morning. His job today is to find out how the working week looked for most of human history, before Henry Ford's introduction of the 40 hour work week in 1926.
He speaks to Maria in Cornwall, whose farm has been around for 800 years, about what the working week looks like for her, and looked like for her forebears. Farmers work in the natural cycle of days and seasons, but why has humanity invented the seven day week to structure our lives? Historian David Henkin may have the answer.
Phil wants to know how a five day 'working week' came to fit into the seven day week model. Sociologist Jan Lucassen, author of 'The Story of Work', offers an insight into why we work and how we came to choose when we did so.
Presenter: Phil Tinline
Producer: Sam Peach
Contributors:
Maria Warne-Elston, farmer and content creator.
David Henkin, author of 'The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are'
Jan Lucassen, author of 'The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind'
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Broadcast
- Mon 25 May 202613:45BBC Radio 4
