The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-06-06
KEEP NATIONS TIME
WONDERFUL CLOCKS AT THE
 WASHINGTON OBsERvATORY.
How the Signal Marking Neon ia FIashed over 0OOy00O Miles oe
 Wires and Cahles--Aiso
 Sent by Wireless. 2,
Washington Letter.


 Washington Letter. S.li5sgpc !,
 A few minutes before IF o'clock noon every day in the year a young man walks into a certain room in the main building at the Naval Observa- tory, which is set up on hill in the northwestern part of the District or Columbia. Ke glances at the various clocks in the room, and then goes over to a table covered with electric appa- ratus.
 He watches the clocks to his left closely and waits for the hands to reach five minutes of IA. AS the .sec= ond hand approaches the 60 on the dial, he prepares to shift a switch. The clock is so finely adjusted that when the second hand points to 60 1t ex- actly marks the beginning of new minute and the end of the old.
 As 1t touches the so the switches are thrown on. That starts a signal that goes out instantaneously over s00,o00 miles of telegraph lines. In washing ton, New York. Burfaio. Cleveland, Newport, Baltimore. Newport News, Norfolk. Savannah, New Orleans, Key West, Galveston, Chicago and else- where the time balls go up on their poles. People know that 1t is five min- utes before noon Washington time.
 The clock which keeps the time in the observatory ticks on. With each tick there Is a contact of electric points. A circuit Is closed and an in- strument on the table similar to tele- graph sounder ticks away loudly.
 It goes on to the twenty-ninth sec ond, then skips one tick, then resumes its steady sounding until the last i've seconds then thNSe Is another gap. These gaps are for the purpose of giv- ing listeners at other ends of the great system of wires a chance to know what part of the minute the clock is on. And so 1t goes up to the last min- ute.
 At the other and, where there are time balls again the skipping of one second. Finally the clock gets around to the hftieth second. Then the circuit re- mains open for ten seconds. There is a silence all along the telegraph wires,
 At the other ends, where there are time balls or merely train operators, the long pause indicates that noon is almost there. The secos d hand makes on toward sixty and finally reaches the mark. Then there is another click, about a second the sounder Is down, and that tells hundreds of thousands of people that 1t is noon in Washing ion. that the Naval Observatory says .o ana the Naval Observatory fs now one of the best time-keeping institu- tions in the United States.
 If is a wonderful operation, this get" ling the time. and highly technical. Finely adjusted clocks. chronographs and other instruments of great value are used. and the taking and record ing of the time has now reached such d point that the human equation is practically eliminated.
 The results obtained are of great value, particularly to mariners. The time is not only flashed to hundreds ot points In the United States, but is sent far out to sea by wireless. cable sends 1t down to Panama and as far as Cai1ao, Peru.
 The observatory here does not send che time much further west than the Rockies. but they have sn observatory at .he Mare leland Navy Yard, and