Dear list members,
I have a few questions on practical timekeeping in Italy during the 19th
and the early 20th century that I hope some of our Italian members can
shed some light on.
I would like to know how civil time reckoning was organized in Italy in
that period and whether anyone can suggest any useful references
(Italian or otherwise) on this topic.
Like elsewhere in Europe, I assume that in Italy many cities and
townships switched from apparent solar time ('sundial time') to mean
local time at some point in the early 19th century. I would be
interested in the years when cities like Rome, Milan, Florence, Naples,
etc. switched to mean local time.
The Kingdom of Italy adopted mean time for the meridian of the
Observatory of Rome (l'Osservatorio de Collegio Romano) in 1866, which
is about 50 minutes ahead of Greenwich, but three different calendar
dates are quoted in my sources: 22 September, 15 November and 15
December. Does anyone know which of these three dates is correct?
I further understand that Italy switched to Middle European Time (1 hour
ahead of Greenwich) on 1 November 1893. Is this date correct?
My final question regards the system of time signals distributed by the
Observatory of Rome along the telegraph network in order that other
Italian towns could synchronize their clocks to that of the observatory.
This must have started in or before 1866 but I would be interested to
know the exact date.
I have checked the annual reports of the Rome Observatory as far as they
are available in the library of the Utrecht Observatory but
unfortunately many volumes are missing, especially the volumes between
1855 and 1900. What I did learn was that they continued providing this
service until the early 1920's but again I could not discover when it
was discontinued (probably not very long afterwards as radio-transmitted
time signals became more practical).
I would be grateful for any information on this topic,
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* Robert H. van Gent * Tel/Fax: 00-31-30-2720269 *
* Zaagmolenkade 50 * E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
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