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