True Time. 67 



time, but if all the clocks for public use in Melbourne told 

 their own tale with a brazen tongue, we should be surprised 

 at the long period that would be embraced between the 

 striking of those that are fast and those that are slow. 

 Some of our railway clocks indeed appear to be of Captain 

 Cuttle's watch class, which if put on ten minutes in the 

 morning, and back a quarter of an hour in the middle of the 

 day, would be equalled by few, and excelled by none. 



The head quarters of all time measurements and regula- 

 tion are the various public and private observatories which 

 now exist in almost every part of the civilized world. It 

 is a duty of the first and greatest importance in such insti- 

 tutions to obtain and maintain true time with the highest 

 precision, and wherever one has been established the first 

 practical benefit it confers on the public is to afford precise 

 means for the regulation of time. This has usually been 

 done by means of periodic signals indicating some pre- 

 arranged instant, such as for instance the drop of a time 

 ball, or the flash or boom of a cannon at one o'clock, which 

 enables those so disposed to determine the errors of their 

 timekeepers and to set them right. It would be inconvenient, 

 however, and even injurious to good clocks to set them right 

 every day, and to obviate this it used to be the custom of 

 some clockmakers in London to place a card showing the 

 error of the clock at the time the signal was given. This, 

 as far as the general public was concerned, was almost an 

 useless compromise, for, to be used as a clock exposed for 

 public reference is intended to be used, it should show the 

 right time with its hands without the necessity of a mental 

 calculation. It appears, therefore, that the periodic method 

 of regulating time, although admirably adapted for obtaining 

 errors and rates of superior clocks and ship chronometers, 

 does very little towards the attainment of that horological 

 millennium which I have assumed to be so desirable, and that 

 a method by which the various clocks exposed for public use 

 could be made to go in unison seems to be the only 

 one by which the end required is likely to be reached. It 

 was the necessity of some reliable means for obtaining true 

 time, for the determination of the errors and rates of chrono- 

 meters belonging to the fleets of merchantmen which then 

 filled our port, and for public purposes generally, that first 

 brought about the establishment of our Observatory in 

 1853 ; and now there are few observatories in the world that 

 have such facilities as it possesses for successfully acorn plish- 



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