Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1883-11-21
the honor with Prof. PIERCE. of Harvard, of hay
ing first suggested the hour belt system.

the lonor with Prof. PIERCE. of Harvard, of hay
Ing first suggested the hour belt system
JEWELLERS OPPOSED TO THE PLAN
Inc jewelers. OF this city do not generally look
with favor upon the proposition to do away with
the present twelve hour division Of time and
adopt the twenty four hour system.
1T is but idle talk" said Mr.. Moore the Ave
nue. leWeier. while discussing the change Of
time with STAR reporter last evening. There
Is no good to he derived from changing the d.
VISION OF the day. The scheme is utterly useless
and impractIcable. and would prove very unsat-
| isiactOry if adopted. Why lust think what the
, Grange Involves. There are not less than thirty
millions of watches with the twelve hour scale
marked upon their dials now worn in the United
States, many OF them being very valuable Then
CLOCKS; there's no end of clocks scattered all
over the country. All these would have to be
| changed. they would have to have new dals
anu an extra wheel and other additions to the
! "orhs 20 reduce the motion OF the hands to one
haii the present rate they travel around the dial
What would be the cost of this changer"
asked the reporter.
Not less than seven or eight dollars for each
watch. though the work on the clocks would
PROBABLY not cost quite az much. There YOU
have an Item: thirty million watches to be re-
paired. at IS each. just think OF all the watches
III the Country going to the jewelers. shops at
one Time Oh. the change would be very alb
surd- Moreover. the time could not be reckoned
WIN any accuracy upon a small dial the watches
would all have to be very large or they would
be inaccurate"
Why would this be3"
"For this reason: twenty-four figures around
small dial would almost run into each other
anu IL would be difficult to tell when the hand
was Just on the dot. With the hands going 80
slow the least variance would mean great deal
In time. Say the distance between the hours
is about the thirty second part of an inch. then
hVe, ten. or fifteen minutes variance could
scarcely be discovered"
THE PLAN NOT A NEW ONE
1.-THE idea is not a new one" said Mr.. Kari
upon whom The STAR next called. mo. it is
by no means new idea; it was the method tried
In England hundred years ago. and discarded
on account of its impracticabty Watches with
the twenty-four hours marked upon their dial
were very common at that period, but they were
not satisfactory, and the number was reduced to
twelve for the sake of convenience. That is the
most rational and convenient division of the
day"
Are any of those watches now In use?" asked
the reporter.
''Yes,-that is they are in existence; they may
not be used. ought to have one somewhere
but don't know exactly where to put my hand
on it. However. here is one of the tlials, which
VIII do as we'll" he said, as he took from
little box large white porcelain watch face.
marked with the 'twenty-four' hours. and
stamped thermometer, Finer Il Rowland, Lon
dom This. he said. was Is or 100 years old,
and had been superseded by the IL hour dials
he thought ii very foolish, he said, to talk of
adopting the 2i-hour scale: it was far less accu-
rate and less convenient than the twelve
NEW KIND OF CLOCK,
one tWenty-four hour clock has been in
vented which has double dial consisting of two
concentric circles-one to mark the time in the
style in present use and the other on the "a
hour plan. By very simple calculation the
hour hand will only move half as fast on the cid
clocks. and the dial on which the old style time
is marked will have two sets of twelve numbers,
so that when the hour hand points to Is on the
new style dial it will mark one on the old style,
and so on until the 81 and second IL come to-
gether at the close of the round