St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1909-09-25

1 ~,
SaA table which is
| covered with electric apparatus.
He watches the clocks to his left
closely and waits for the hands to
reach 11:55. AS the second hand ap-
proaches the 60 on the dial he pre-
pares to shift a switch. The clock is
SO finely adjusted that when the Sec
ond hand points to go it exactly marks
the beginning of new minute.
AS it touches the so the switches
are thrown on. That starts signal
that goes out instantaenously over
100000 miles of telegraph lines. In
Washington, New York, Buffalo, Cleve-
land, Newport, Baltimore, Newport
| News, Norfolk, Savannah, New Or
leans, Key West, Galveston, Chicago
and elsewhere the time balls go up on
their poles. People know that it is
five minutes before noon Washington
time.
The clock which keeps the time in
the observatory ticks on. With each
tick there is contact of electric
points. A circuit is closed and an in
strument on the table similar in ap-
pearance to telegraph sounder ticks
away loudly.
It goes on to the twenty-ninth Sec
ond, then skips one tick, then re-
sumes its steady sounding until the
last five seconds, then there is an
other gap. These gaps are for the pur-
pose of giving listeners at other ends
of the great system of wires a chance
to know what part of the minute the
clock Is on. So it goes up to the last
minute.
At the twenty-ninth second there is
again the skipping of one second.
Finally the clock gets around to the
fiftieth second. Then the circuit re-
mains open for ten seconds. There is
silence all along the telegraph wires.
At the other end, where there are
time balls or merely train operators,
the long pause indicates that noon is
almost there. The second hand
makes on toward so and finally
reaches the mark. Then there is an
other click, in about a second the
scunder is down and that tells hun
dreds of thousands of people that it is
noon in Washington, that the naval
observatory says so, and the naval
observatory is Dow one of the best
time-keeping institutions in the United
States.
It is wonderful operation, this
getting the time, and highly tech
meal. Finely adjusted clocks, chrome
graphs and other instruments of great
value are used, and the taking and
recording Of the time has reached a
point where the human equation is
practically eliminated.
The results obtained are of great
value, particularly to mariners. The
time is not only flashed to hundreds
of points in the United States, but it
is sent far out to sea by wireless, and
down to Panama and Callao, Peru.
The observatory here does not send
the time much farther west than the
Rockies, but they have an observa-
tory at the Mare Island navy yard,
and from there the time is sent up
and down the Pacific coast, just as it
Is from here to the eastern part of the
United States. In the cities where
the central time is used the flash
marks IL O'Clock. An hour later local
operators drop the time balls.
The mean time is determined by
astronomical observations When GER
tain stars pass the seventy-f1fth meri-
dian, called the meridian of Washing
ton, it is certain time.
AS the stars reach certain point
in transit the operator presses a key
in his hand. A contact is, made and
recorded on chronograph. The
chronograph consists of a cylinder
covered with paper. A fountain pen
rests on the paper. It is held by an
arm attached to the mechanism. The
cylinder reVolves once a minute and
the pen moves along the surface of
the paper, making spiral line.
A sidereal clock of the finest make
is running in a vault underneath the
observatory. With each tick of the
clock there is contact of two points.
These two points are attached to
wires that lead to an electro-magnet
attached to the arm that holds the
pen of the chronograph. The clock is
SO adjusted that each minute the pen
jumps to one side. Consequently there
is break in the line.
There are other breaks, too, when
the observer watches the stars cross
the lines in the field of the telescope.
The mean time thus recorded for each
star, after being corrected for errors.
is the clock time of the stars transit.
Whatever difference there is between
the clock time and the sidereal time
marked by the transit of the stars is
the error of the clock. From these
astronomical observations the side
real time is obtained The error
amounts to but little, rarely being
more than from five one-hundredths
to ten. one-hundredths of a second.