Bytes: GRAHAM'S TIME BALLS AND BRETT'S MONTHLY

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

GRAHAM'S TIME BALLS AND BRETT'S MONTHLY

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GRAHAM'S TIME BALLS:

The following item was emailed to me by Graham E.

Thanks, Graham.

An interesting item to see out the old year.

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Hi Mr O,

As New Year approaches many people will watch the ball drop in Time Square at midnight. This continues a timekeeping tradition begun in 1829.

In the 1800’s few people could afford to have their own watches and clocks, instead relying on the hourly chimes of the church clock to tell time. The church clocks were not very accurate but most people had no need for precise time

Things were different for a ship’s captain. Ships needed extremely precise clocks to determine their position at sea, which they did by taking celestial readings and coordinating those readings with the time they were known to occur at another point on earth, such as at Greenwich. The breakthrough came in 1761 when John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter, developed a chronometer that was accurate and portable enough to do the job. But Harrison’s remarkable invention was still useless if it couldn’t be set correctly before departing on a long voyage.

The idea of the time ball was proposed in 1829 by Robert Wauchope, a Royal Navy captain. Robert suggested that the time ball be set up at the harbor and dropped at a specific moment to indicate the time. Sailors could view it through a telescope and set their chronometers accordingly.

The first time ball was erected in the harbor at Portsmouth, England. It worked so well that in 1833 another one was set up at the Greenwich Observatory on a hilltop —the same one that you see today. The first American time ball went into service in 1845 at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

There are over sixty time balls still standing at harbors around the world today. A few of them are still operating for the novelty or for tourists, like the one at Greenwich Observatory, with others operating on special occasions, such as the Times Square time ball in New York.

The Greenwich Time Ball, London, England.

Williamstown Lighthouse and Time Ball Tower, Melbourne, Victoria.

Old Windmill and Time Ball, Brisbane, Queensland.

Sydney Observatory and Time Ball, Sydney, New South Wales.

Semaphore Time Ball Tower, Adelaide, South Australia.

Customs House and Time Ball, Newcastle, New South Wales.

Time Ball, Fremantle, Western Australia.

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BRETT'S MONTHLY:

As usual, Brett B has sent a list of the coming month’s holidays and special days.

Thanks, Brett.

Click on the daily ones to expand the links.

A good item to see in the new month, the new year and the new decade (let's not debate whether the new decade begins in 2021, rather thqan 2020) . . .

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