68 True Time. 



ing any method of public time regulation that may be 

 adopted, possessing as it does the most perfect appliances in 

 the world for such purposes, and among them the magnificent 

 clock, whose performance was declared by the jurors of the 

 late Paris Exhibition to be quite unprecedented. 



With such facilities, I should be to blame if I did not 

 avail myself of every opportunity to make them render all 

 the practical service possible to the community ; and I am 

 now about to propose a plan for the regulation of public 

 time, which has already been adopted in Liverpool, Glasgow, 

 and Edinburgh, and I think in some parts of London, with 

 great success, economy, and public satisfaction. This plan 

 consists in controlling electrically, by currents from a 

 standard clock, all clocks that may be placed in electric 

 circuit with it, and the method of doing it comprises the 

 laying down of a " time main," and laying on the supply to 

 any clock or establishment requiring it, almost as you would 

 gas. About twenty years ago, Mr. Bain, in London, 

 invented a clock which went by electro magnetism, instead of 

 by a weight or spring ; the galvanic current necessary to 

 drive it was very small, and the clock went uncommonly 

 well, but in common with all clocks that depend on a gal- 

 vanic battery for their motive power, it was liable to failure, 

 and by experience it has been found almost impossible to 

 obviate this uncertainty ; this and allied electric clocks, have 

 never, therefore, come into general use. The ingenious 

 contrivance invented by Bain, however, for driving a clock 

 by electricity, has been most cleverly modified and adapted 

 by Mr. Jones, of Chester, for controlling pendulum clocks 

 driven by the ordinary weight or spring, which it accom- 

 plishes with the utmost precision and regularity, at a very 

 slight cost, and above all, involves no special clocks, nor any 

 great alterations in the clocks it is desired to control. 



The plan is this — the Observatory clock is furnished with 

 a second wheel on the escape-wheel arbor, which has thirty 

 teeth, each tooth of which in passing brings a pair of light 

 springs in contact for about l-10th of a second at every escape ; 

 but there are two sets of springs, and one set is brought into 

 contact at the even and the other at the odd seconds of the 

 clock. These springs are insulated one from another, and 

 are armed with platina at the points of contact. We will 

 call the springs A and B, and the points they touch, common 

 to both, : so that at the even second A touches C, and at 

 the odd B touches 0. A galvanic battery with 2 (or 



