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 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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. > > _______________________________________________ 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.
