[time-nuts] Setting clocks 100 years ago

J. Forster jfor at quik.com
Thu Nov 4 23:10:19 UTC 2010


In major ports, which were often protected by forts, there was often a
"noon gun".

In fact there is a joke/math olympics question about the soldier who fired
the noon gun, setting his watch every morning by a jewelers clock. The
jeweler set his clock every day by the fort's noon gun.

-John

==============


> Hi
>
> The simple answer is "that depends". One big driver for putting up a clock
> tower in the middle of town was to indeed have "one standard" that the
> town could run on. Without that - everybody is on their own.
>
> The main clock was often regulated by a simple sundial sitting someplace
> convenient. Shadow crosses line / clock goes bong = close enough. Have a
> month of cloudy weather, the clock may be off by a half hour or so. Not
> the issue it would be today, but probably still a bother. I suspect that
> if your town was prosperous enough you had a noon sight setup that gave
> you a bit better accuracy than the sun dial. There certainly were a number
> of maritime situations where you did indeed need the right time. Major
> harbors would have needed the noon sight gear.
>
> Bob
>
>
> On Nov 4, 2010, at 6:08 PM, J. Forster wrote:
>
>> My impression is that before the Railways and Telegraph, each town had
>> time, based on local solar time, determined by a a noon sight or
>> something
>> similar. That means that towns kept time based on their longditude.
>>
>> Until the railways went long distances, Standard Time and Time Zones
>> were
>> not needed.
>>
>> There was an interesting episode on the PBS show, "The History
>> Detectives"
>> a month or so ago about a clock from a Chicago jewelers that was used as
>> the master time clock for a railroad.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> -John
>>
>> ===============
>>
>>> This evening I happened to hear the nearby church's bell tolling 10 pm,
>>> and
>>> thought
>>> that 100+ years ago this could have been the "official" time of the
>>> town,
>>> which
>>> maybe was used by people to set their own clocks (if any). But then I
>>> wondered,
>>> who told the priest what time was it? To what extent the clocks of two
>>> towns
>>> were expected to be close to one another? Does anybody know?
>>>
>>> Antonio I8IOV
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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