278 
SCIENCE. 
ifies the belief that, were the railroads in the rest of the 
United States approached on this question, they would 
combine to adopt the standards of time now used by a 
few of the great centres of population. Thus, while it 
was found quite impossible to unite the New England 
roads upon Boston time, and while it would have been 
equally impossible to cause the Boston roads to run on 
New York time, it has proved highly satisfactory to allow 
the current of travel, which always drifts toward the 
nearest centre of population, to decide the matter. To 
bring into use in a large section of the country two stand- 
ards, where before there has been a dozen, is the first 
step toward uniting the two into one ; and, in the writer’s 
opinion, it is only by a gradual amalgamation of different 
local times that the final adoption of a few standards for 
the whole country can be effected. As a rule, railway 
corporations are more intelligent on this subject than the 
town councils which are elected by popular suffrage. 
They are also urged to encourage uniform time by their 
own interests. They are under the direct influence of 
State legislation, and the agreement of a number of rail- 
roads can be made to influence the communities of the 
regions traversed to use the railroad standard. Whether 
the pressure of State legislation ought to be used is an 
open question. It has been the writer’s experience that 
the railroads are quite willing to do their part without 
recourse to any such means ; and with the average rail- 
road official the fact that a service is to be enforced by 
legislation prejudices him against it. 
The difficulties in the way of introducing a new stand- 
ard would still further be reduced if the observatories 
universally took care to distribute a time which should be 
as accurate as human art could make it, and use only 
such simple means of rendering it available as could 
allow of no vitiation of the message over the time-tele- 
graph wires. By so doing the observatories would, so 
to speak, have a monopoly of the best article in the 
market, for no private jewelers could hope to furnish the 
local time with the precision obtained in a first-class 
observatory, where every means is taken to insure accur- 
acy. There is, however, little use in trying to supplant a 
local time which is furnished by a respectable jeweler 
who takes good care of a good clock, and who has ac- 
quired the art of determining his time carefully, if the 
new system of signals is not to be relied upon within a 
single second. Unfortunately, the example set the time- 
services of the country, by that under the direction of the 
Naval Observatory at Washington, is not of the best ; 
and, until it is realized by the proper officers that a divi- 
sion of responsibility in the charge of delivering time- 
messages results in the inaccuracy of the service to the 
public, the services organized under the control of univer- 
sities will occupy the first place for accuracy. 
The best, because the most unmistakable in its indica- 
tions, of the means yet proposed for the distribution of a 
public time consists in the ordinary telegraph receiving- 
instrument, which is brought into circuit with the observ- 
atory clock at stated intervals. The clock then automat- 
ically beats in such a manner as to indicate the beginning 
of the minute, or of the five minutes, which have been 
agreed upon for the reception of the time by telegraph. 
Experience has shown that the average railroad em- 
ployee or telegraph operator very quickly apprehends 
this method of transmission, and, since the clock effects 
the distribution automatically, if the signals are received 
at all they must be exact. The very tempting method of 
propelling the hands of clocks by electricity has never 
been successfully applied over extended areas ; and the 
nearest approach to an accurate service from a distant 
observatory takes place when the pendulum of the clock 
at a distance from the observatory is moving in sympathy 
with the observatory clock, through the action of induced 
electrical currents. A very good example of this kind 
may be seen in the Treasury clock, at Washington, 
where one of the Observatory clocks controls it, beat by 
heat, through the intervention of a mile of telegraph-wire. 
In this system, which is commonly known as Jones’s 
system, the interruption of the telegraphic circuit, by 
storms or otherwise, does not cause the controlled clock 
to stop, as in the systems above referred to ; but one can 
never be sure, when the current is restored, that the 
controlled clock will not have deviated during the stop- 
page of its control ; and this method has not proved suc- 
cessful where high accuracy is demanded, or the tele- 
graph lines are liable to such interruptions as are com- 
mon in our climate. This method, however, has found 
considerable favor in England, and the writer had little 
difficulty in using a clock, so controlled, at the end of a 
well-protected wire four miles distant from the Observa- 
tory of Harvard College. It was not, however, perfectly 
reliable, and errors ol from two to ten seconds were 
sometimes found to exist in the controlled clock. 
Of the new method, which originated, we believe, in 
Vienna, and has made its way as tar westward as Paris, 
of setting clocks by means of pneumatic tubes, there can 
be a great deal said on the score of economy, when the 
system is applied to large cities. It certainly would be a 
popular idea to have the time laid on, as the water or 
gas is, from a small pipe passing the door. The special 
clock needed would be furnished and kept in order by 
the small payment of a small annual rental. The expense 
would be trifling as compared with any system yet sug- 
gested of equal accuracy, and the field is so promising 
that it would be strange it attempts were not soon made 
in our large cities to occupy it. But such or any similar 
systems for the local distribution of time will depend 
upon the accurate and regular reception of the standard 
from an observatory which may be several hundred miles 
distant ; and for this principal service, as well as for the 
railroads, the writer has already expressed the opinion 
that the transmitting and receiving apparatus of the tele- 
graph companies, in connection with an observatory 
clock, affords the best, as well as the simplest, means. 
So much for the public distribution for commercial 
and social purposes. There is another and extremely 
important service, too much neglected in our country, in 
behalf of the merchant marine. The Royal Observatory 
at Greenwich justly considers the accurate dropping of 
the time-balls on the English coast of almost equal im- 
portance with the transmission of time over England. A 
similar service should be undertaken by our own Naval 
Observatory, and the suggestions embodied in Professor 
Holden’s report to the Secretary of the Navy*, on this 
subject, receive the cordial support not only of the 
officers of the navy and of the merchant marine, but of 
those men of science whose attention has been called to 
the lack of such a service at the important ports of Phi.- 
adelphia, Baltimore, and San Francisco. 
Such a service is performed for the port of New York, 
though not with the assurance of accuracy we have a 
light to expect in such a Government work. The Obser- 
vatory of Harvard College, in connection with the 
United States Army Signal Service, drops a time-ball for 
the benefit of Boston Harbor, and perhaps there is no 
one public signal of the Harvard Time Service which is 
received with more public favor than this, not only by 
the commanders of vessels lying in the harbor, but by 
the people living on the surrounding highlands, and 
numerous factories and institutions from which the signal 
is visible. This signal owes its existence to the public 
spirit shown by the Equitable Life Insurance Company, 
of New York, in erecting the apparatus necessary upon 
the top of their magnificent building. The time-balls in 
Boston, New York, and Washington, have thoroughly 
ingratiated themselves in the public favor. 
The cost of the construction of a time-ball of the 
* Report of the Secretary of the Navy, Second Session, Forty-fourth 
Congress. 
