HOW STANDARD TIME IS OBTAINED. 213 



Perrot considers the best methods of giving the desired instruction. 

 However interesting and valuable his suggestions may be in com- 

 munities where the instruction has already been established, it is 

 evident that there must first be a conviction of the value and neces- 

 sity of such studies and the determination to have them started. 

 Methods are not diificult to devise, and Avill vary with national and 

 individual tastes. That American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty 

 years ago should have objected to the introduction of the history 

 of the fine arts into their curricula is easily understood. Art in 

 any form was regarded by the l^ew England mind as an emana- 

 tion of the devil, and the New England mind controlled American 

 colleges. Why the repugnance continues to exist is harder to un- 

 derstand. It may subsist from ignorance, from prejudice, or from 

 conservatism. Conservatism may still regard all information to 

 be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may still be 

 strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words are the 

 only vehicles of instruction, and that the arts are useless and idle 

 vanities, while ignorance may be awaiting demonstration which will 

 have to be strong and conclusive to awake it from self-satisfied 

 apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and ac- 

 celerate the time when the best and the fullest education will be 

 offered by the American university! 



HOW STANDAKD TIME IS OBTAmED. 



By T. B. WILLSON, M. A. 



ALMOST everybody knows that observatories are the places 

 -^^- from which standard time is sent out and corrected daily 

 or hourly. But comparatively few have more than the vaguest 

 idea of the means used at the observatories for obtaining it. 



Probably the majority of people suppose that the observatories 

 obtain the correct time from the sun. When the average man 

 wishes to give his watch the highest praise he says, " It regulates 

 the sun," not being aAvare that a w^atch which would keep with 

 the sun around the year would have to be nearly as bad as Sam 

 Weller's. The farmer may safely decide when to go in to dinner 

 by the sun, but if th« mariner was as confident that the sun marked 

 always the correct time as the farmer is he would be sure to be 

 at times two or three hundred miles from where he thought he 

 was. In other words, the sun — that is, a sundial — is only correct 

 on a few days in each year, and during the intervening times gets 

 as far as a whole quarter hour fast or slow. 



