Timekeeper

“ In consequence of my having been kept all night from the ship by the tempestuous weather the timekeeper went down at 10 hours 5 minutes 36 seconds. Its rate previous to this was 1 second, 7 losing in 24 hours, and its error from the mean time at Greenwich was 7 minutes 29 seconds, 2 too slow. I set it going again by a common watch, corrected by observations, and endeavoured to make the error the same as if it had not stopped; but being over cautious made me tedious in setting it in motion, and increased the error from mean time at Greenwich. ”

“ The Several Branches of a Great Art.—The timekeeper—whether it be the scientific astronomical clock, or the chronometer used by mariners, or the modern watch, minute in size but recording time with accuracy, or the bracket or table clock, or the long-case clock—has proceeded on parallel lines of development. ”

“ From being very untrustworthy, astronomical clocks are now made to great perfection by the application of the pendulum and by its compensation, while the invention of chronometers has placed a portable and equally trust worthy timekeeper in the hands of travellers. ”

“ He was promised 10,000 pounds to explain the principle of his timekeeper and build three more. The chronometer kept time with extreme accuracy and was mounted to remove the effect of the ship's motion. To find a ship's position, a navigator noted the time and measured the positions of certain stars. He compared these positions with tables that showed the stars' positions at Greenwich mean time, and then calculated the ship's position. There was a toll on ships entering the port of London to pay for repairs to its walls. ”

“ A good clock is also a necessary adjunct for astronomical observations, and the astronomical clocks and chronometers now in use record the time with almost perfect accuracy. The improvement in telescopes, the use of micrometers, etc., have greatly facilitated observations. In the transit clock we have a most useful timekeeper, for the ordinary clocks are not sufficiently accurate for very close observations. The sidereal time differs from solar time, and the twenty-four hours’ period is calculated from the moment a star passes the meridian until it passes it again. ”

“ It demanded craftsmanship of the highest character to create these masterpieces of horology, and the art has been continued in a separate stream to that of clockmaking up to the present day. The watch is not the small clock, nor is the clock the large watch. Whatever may have been their common origin, each has developed on lines essentially proper for the technique. As the clock has developed in mechanical perfection, so the watch has similarly kept in parallel progress towards the same ideal, that of the perfect timekeeper. ”

“ These dry facts may serve to whet the curiosity of the student in regard to the measurement of time and its origin. They add a piquancy to the clock dial as we now know it. Scientific it is, as one of man's most exact recorders of natural phenomena. That an exact timekeeper should be found in the pocket of every schoolboy would seem an astounding miracle to our ancestors two hundred years ago, or even less than a hundred years ago:
'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own,
writes Pope in his Essay on Criticism in 1725. ”

“ In these days of overtime and complex working schedules, a timekeeper should check the time slips against the original train sheet, not against a copy, a transcript or an excerpt. A division accounting bureau handling all that it should handle has also much other use for the train sheet. ”

“ In order to clear it up then, I will submit to the public to determine whether the general use and practicability of my Invention can, in the nature of things, be attacked, unless under one of these three following heads:
1. That a Timekeeper, however perfect, is an insufficient means of ascertaining the Longitude at sea. [43]
2. That such information has not been given as will enable other workmen to make other Timekeepers of equal goodness with that which is certified to have kept the Longitude.
Or 3. That they will come to so enormous a price as to be out of the reach of purchase. ”

“ William Derham published a scientific description of various kinds of timekeepers in The Artificial Clock-Maker, in 1700, with a table of equations from Flamsteed to facilitate comparison of mean time with that shown by the sfun-dial or apparent time. In 1714 Henry Sully, an Englishman, published a treatise at Vienna, on finding time artificially. He went to France, and spent the rest of his life in trying to make a timekeeper for the discovery of the longitude at sea. In 1716 he presented a watch of his own make to the Academy of Sciences, which was approved ”

“ Altho one of the easiest escapements to set out correctly the pallets are often improperly formed making an escapement which gives indifferent service. As a timekeeper the anchor escapement is inferior to the dead-beat escapement.
Escapement, Chronometer—A detached escapement in which the escape wheel is locked on a stone carried in a detent, and in which the teeth of the escape wheel impart an impulse to a pallet on the balance staff with every alternate vibration. ”

“ To keep track of the workman’s time spent on each unit of product, record must be kept by means of time cards, timekeepers, time clocks, or other similar device which will show the time at which work was commenced and the time at which it was finished or when the working force is transferred to other work. ”

“ Complicated Watches are so called because besides the ordinary watch movement they possess other mechanism more or less complicated, by means of which they can indicate special portions of time,—as for instance the Chronograph, which marks on its dial the fifth of a second; the Quarter, and Half-Quarter, and Minute Repeaters, which furnish the time in the dark to within a minute, and are invaluable to invalids and blind persons; the Clock-Watch, which strikes the hours even in the pocket ”

“ The best clock time-keeper is not absolutely perfect, so its rate must be kept; but the watchmaker ordinarily has no means of correcting the error of his regulator, until the accumulation renders it a serious inconvenience. Did he possess a Transit instrument, properly set and adjusted for meridian, together with the required books and knowledge of observing, he could from day to day correct his clock and keep accurate time ”

“ But the regulating, as a matter of course, requires a regulator, or standard, of time, which is not always to be found in country places, nor even is the man in charge of clock-winding always in possession of a watch sufficiently accurate to convey the time from the regulator if there were one to the Church clock. Of late, Church clocks are made to go eight days, and so the labour of frequent winding has been saved, while at the same time by extra care in the [ 145] manufacture and fixing of a clock, there need be no necessity for frequently regulating it. ”

“ The sense of responsibility, of importance, which such a wonderful little piece of mechanism gives to them, the alacrity with which they thenceforth note the flight of time and compare the working of all other time-pieces, is remarkable. One of the first things usually done by the juvenile with his or her watch is, curiously enough, to challenge thereby the performance of the old-established time-pieces in the house,—even the infallible old Hall Clock, a very Nestor among clocks, does not escape scrutiny. ”

“ Calendar work on watches is, of course, fatal to great accuracy of time-keeping, and is very complicated. A watch is made to record days of the week and month, and to take account of leap years usually by the aid of star-wheels with suitable pauls and stops. The type of this mechanism is to be found in the calendar motion of an ordinary grandfather's clock. ”

“ I admire the skill of the watch-maker who produces an accurate timepiece; but how much more would I admire his skill if he so made one watch that it was capable not only of keeping time, but also of evolving a series of watches, each keeping better time than that which produced it, so that from the plainest, simplest form of a watch there should be eventually evolved a magnificent chronometer, with jeweled holes, whose time would not vary from the true time a second in a million of years! ”

“ It is well that modern clocks have no wise saws and [Pg 32] mottoes telling of the unalterable hand of Time; "Old Time, the clock-setter, that bald sexton, Time," as Shakespeare says in King John.
Early Mechanism.—The problem for the old clockmakers who wished to supplant the primitive measurement of time by candle, by the hour-glass, and later by the sundial, was to produce a piece of mechanism which would in twenty-four hours, the prescribed period of day and night, indicate the flight of time hour by hour. ”

“ In order that a clock should be used as an indicator of time, it is not enough that its error at every instant should be known; its error must be continually corrected so that its face-reading shall always indicate true time. And, in order that a clock should be used as a distributor of time, it must be provided with apparatus, distinct from the mechanism which keeps the time and in no way interfering with it, which is capable of sending time to other clocks. ”

“ This I consider a perfect striking clock. It is a large movement of fine workmanship and was made in the department of the Jura, France. When a clock or watch only repeats, I consider the old “five-minute repeater” the best. I used this method in a clock which, on pulling the cord, strikes the hour on a large bell and if that is all it strikes, then it is less than five minutes past. If more than five minutes past it follows the hour by one blow on a small bell for every five minutes. ”

“ We may add that the great majority of clocks of modern manufacture of any pretention to time-keepers are constructed with the dead beat escapement of Graham or a modification of it, combined with a mercurial or gridiron pendulum. For the best Observatory clocks of the more expensive kind other more elaborate forms of escapement are sometimes used, as, for example, that in the clock at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, which we shall refer to in detail further on, on account of other new points in its construction. ”

“ We find, say, that as compared with our watch time, one clock is two minutes fast, the next three minutes fast, the next one minute slow, and so on, two or three perhaps being as much as six or seven minutes fast, and two or three being as much as three or four minutes slow as compared with the watch. We note, however, that these wider ranges of difference occur only in the case of clocks presumably inferior—cheap clocks in small [Pg 68] shops, old clocks in buildings where manifestly the flight of time is not much noted, and so forth. ”

“ But the moon alone moves with sufficient rapidity to act as a time indicator for terrestrial voyagers. It is hardly necessary to explain why rapidity of motion is important; but the following illustration may be given for the purpose. The hour-hand of a clock does in reality indicate the minute as well as the hour; yet, owing to the slowness of its motion, we regard the hour-hand as an unsatisfactory time-indicator, and only consider it as showing what hour is in progress. ”

“ The collecting of clocks is a fad which few people indulge in. Yet there are those who own ten or a dozen timepieces, and who like to have them in running order. The old Dutch clocks, while looking very well, are notoriously ill-regulated time-keepers. A collector took a prize lately acquired to an old German clock-repairer who seemed more learned in the ways of ancient clocks than many a more pretentious maker. ”

“ The watchman’s or tell-tale clock, used when it is desired to make sure of a watchman being on the spot and awake all the night, is a clock with a set of spikes, generally 48 or 96, sticking out all round the dial, and a handle somewhere in the case, by pulling which one of the spikes which is opposite to it, or to some lever connected with it is pressed in. This wheel of spikes is carried round with the hour-hand, which in these clocks is generally a twenty-four hour one. ”

“ But since then many improvements have been made in it, so that makers are now enabled to produce a pocket watch, with the short angle lever escapement, which marks time at a steady rate of within four or five seconds weekly,—a rate which approaches so near to the time-keeping of a pocket chronometer, that unless the minutest exactness for some specific purpose is required, the last-named watch is all that can be wished for. ”

“ It is worth while to note that even with such perfect clocks and favorable conditions it is still impossible to secure perfect timekeeping. Add to this the fact that it is not usual for those who send out the time, after it has been received from the observatory, to pay much heed to variations, even of several seconds, in their master clocks, and we see why it is a disheartening task to keep the best watch as near the second as the owner would fain have it. ”

“ Why, you might almost say it ran by clock-work! The millions of watches in millions of pockets, the millions of clocks on millions of walls, all running steadily together—these were what kept the complicated machinery of modern life from getting tangled and confused.
Yes; but what did people do before they had such timepieces? Back in the very beginning, before they had invented or manufactured anything—far back in the days of the caveman—even those people must have had some method of telling time. ”