Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-08-13
TINE OF THE NATION.
How It Is Kept at the Naval Oh
servatory In Washington.
THE SIGNAL FOR HIGH NOON.
II Is Flashed Out Over Nearly a Mil
lien Miles of Telegraph Wires Every
Day In the Year-Ths Finely Ad-
justed Instruments That Are Used.

Day In the Year-Ths Finely Ad-
justed Instruments That Are Used.
n few minutes before - o'clock noon
every day in the year a young man
walks into a certain room Of the main
building at the naval observatory.
which is set up on hill in the north
western part of the District of Column
bia. He glances at the various clocks
in the room and then goes over to a
table which is covered with electric
apparatus.
He watches the clocks to his left
closely and waits for the hands to
reach II 80. AS the second hand APP
prOaches the 60 on the dial he pre-
pares to shift a switch. The clock is
so finely adjusted that when the sec
0nd hand points to go it exactly marks
the beginning of Il new minute.
AS it touches the 60 the switches
are thrown on. That starts signal
that goes out in$tantaneouSIy 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 to 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
,+,p,r,, tI,n III 81,
pearance to a telegraph sounder ticks
away loudly.
1t goes on to the twenty ninth sec
Ond. then skips one tick, then resumes
its steady sounding until the last five
seconds; then there is another gap
These gaps are for the purpose of
giving listeners at the 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
fftieth 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 60 and finally reaches
! the mark. Then there is another click;
| in about a second the sounder is down.
and that tells hundreds of thousands
| of people that it is noon in Washing
ton.
1t is a wonderful operation, this get
| ting the time, and highly technical.
Finely adjusted clocks, chronographs
and other instruments of great value
are used. and the taking and recording
of the time have reached a point where
| the human equation is practically elm
| mated.
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. A
cable carries the fash to Havana; an
other to Panama and Callao, Peru.
The observatory here does not send
the time much farther west than the
Rockies, but they have an observatory
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 fash marks
| II o'clock. An hour later local opera
! tors drop the time balls.
| The mean time is determined by as
| Economical observations. When GER
| tain stars pass the seventy-ffth merid-
| ian, called the meridian of Washing
| ton, it is a certain time. The operator
| watches for the stars through a tele-
scope, the field of which is covered
with fine wires.
AS the stars reach a certain point in
transit the operator presses a key in
his hand. A contact is made and re-
corded on a chronograph. The chrome
graph consists of Il cylinder covered
| with paper. A fountain pen rests on
the paper. 1t is held by an arm at
| tached to the mechanism. The cylin-
der revolves once a minute, and the
| pen moves along the surface Of the
paper, making d spiral line.
A sidereal clock of the finest make is
running in a vault underneath the OBJ
servatory. With each tick of the
clock there is q contact Of two points.
| These two points are attached to wires
| that lead to an electromagnetic at
| tached 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 re-
| corded for each star, after being cor
| rected 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 trans
| it of the stars is the error Of the
clock From these astronomical OBJ
servations the sidereal time is OBJ
| tanned The error amounts to but
| little, rarely being more than from
| five -hundredths to ten one-hun-
| dredths of a second.
| The time Of sending fash over the