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This article analyses how, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the child and adolescent were understood via observation mechanisms which, in measuring bodies, had the goal of setting the standards of growth seen as “normal”, establishing stages of life, and studying rhythms in the development of life and the transformation of human beings. Based on the work of Doctor Paul Louis Gabriel Godin (1859-1936), we question this relationship between the body and time, as well as its implications in defining thresholds between ages at a period when the regulation of adolescent conduct on the social scene was making itself felt. His writings also allow us to analyse the cohabitation of two – apparently contradictory – ways of thinking the body: one centred on the standardization of norms, and the other dealing with personal specificities, the premise of a very contemporary vision of an individual perfectible through the optimization of his physical, cognitive and emotional faculties. A comparison with analogous works done in Italy at the same time, finally shows the extent to which physical measurements are intermingled with political measures. The tempos of other social transformations are imprinted into the ages and bodies of boys.