[time-nuts] Setting clocks 100 years ago

Alan Melia alan.melia at btinternet.com
Fri Nov 5 00:55:59 UTC 2010


Hi Antonio
170 years ago in the UK the time was beginning to be distributed by
telegraph. In the UK the railways were the driving force for this and a
universal (countrywide) time. Prior to that all the towns in the UK had a
local time ....I dont know where it came from but could be a sundial at a
main church. The industrial revolution was also the force behind tower
clocks....the factory-owners wanted their workers in on time with no
excuses. It probably didnt matter so much in the countryside. Some
long-cased clock were remakable accurate for the time and technology.
Harrison of the famous marine chronometer started as an amateur by trying
and suceeding in improving these. You seee there is nothing new
in"time-nuts" :-)) I think he was a carpenter by trade.

There is a very readable book by David Rooney who is the curator of the
National Martitime Museum at Greenwich, which charts the life of one Ruth
Belville and her daughter who distributed the time the watchmakers in London
from the 1840s right up into the 1930s when radio was begining to take over.
She carried a calibrated certified chronometer, which was checked at
Greenwich each week.

"Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady" by David Rooney
ISBN 978-0-948065-97-2
www.nmm.ac.uk/publishing


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <iovane at inwind.it>
To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 9:47 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] Setting clocks 100 years ago


> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.





More information about the Time-nuts_lists.febo.com mailing list