109 

 TBIE SIGNALS. 



[By F. Abbott, F.R.A.S.] 



At the INTay meeting of the Society, some notes were read and a 

 discussion took place as to the desirability of establishins: time signals 

 in the colony. In the opinion of that meeting further information was 

 required on the su])jcct, and a committee was appointed to make 

 inquiry as to the size of gun necessary, the distance at which a report 

 could be heard, and the amount of expense that would be incurred. 



Part of this duty the committee has been relieved from, through 

 the kindness of Colonel Chesney, who partly for this purpose and 

 partly for military service, . has caused three guns to be fired at 4 

 p.m., on the first Thursday in every month, provided the weather 

 was fine, and if not on the first fine day following. Through the 

 Horological Institute of London, I am now in possession of further 

 information on the subject, especially on the method adopted for 

 obtaining and transmitting correct time, and have therefore thought 

 it desirable to bring the practical portion more fully before the 

 Society, as Time Signals are now held to be of great importance in 

 all manufacturing or commercial towns, in which either public or 

 private works are carried on. 



It will appear that much greater accuracy, with considerable 

 ingenuity and cost, both in obtaining and transmitting correct time, 

 has been adopted in other places, than at present we can hope for 

 here, notwithstanding one uniform time, to one or two seconds, may 

 be kept with the means we have from one end of the island to the 

 other. In a letter from Dr. Hirsch, the Director of the Cantonal 

 Observatory at Neuchatel, there is described a very ingenious con- 

 trivance for appreciating the fractions of seconds in the reception of 

 time signals. It will be unnecessary to give a full description of the 

 means used for the reception of time at the several stations, and only 

 necessary in this instance to note, that by most careful sideral obser- 

 vations it will give an accuracy that reduces any possible error to 

 less than one tenth of a second. The signals are established at Berne, 

 Chauz-de-fond, Locle, Fonts, and Flurier, as well as at several private 

 houses. 



To give anything like a full and correct description of the system 

 of time signals as established at, and in connexion with the Royal 

 Observatory at Greenwich would not in this case be desirable, suffice 

 it to say that the whole of the system is automatic. The apparatus is 

 distributed in various places, but works together as one complete 

 whole. Time signals pass from a clock in the Observatory to several 

 points in London,frora which they become again distributed to different 

 stations, and by means of the various telegraphic lines, they are again 

 extensively transmitted throughout the country ; the clocks of many 

 important lines of railway being constantly regulated by them. The 

 signal passes as far as Brighton in the south, Lowestoft in the east, 

 Cardiff in the west, and Glasgow in the north ; as well as to Man- 

 chester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and other important places. These 

 signals are distributed (whca received from Greenwich) by the 



