Omaha daily bee., 1910-09-22

belt. and from the Mare Island navy yard
to stations IN that belt. From that day
TO this. every properly regulated clock IN
the United states has pointed 60 me same
minute and the same second at all tine.
only the hour hand differs. II IL an hour
slower In Chicago than In W ashinGten. Two
hours slower in Denver. and three hours
slower in san Francisco Sometimes this
d. ference in time is advantageous TO GER
tain people. For Instance the Washing
ton correspondent OF a san Francisco after
noon paper can send afternoon happenings
in congress TO his paper long after the New
York paper has gone to press. and the san
Francisco citizen reads later news from
Washington in his afternoon paper than
does the citizen OF Washington. On the
other hand. the afternoon paper IN Wash
ingtun gets out three hours earlier than
that OF san Francisco, and the Washing
tonians may be reading about Golden Gate
happenings before the resilient Of san
Francisco.
The accuracy Of the nations time Re
largely in the keeping OF the national OBJ
servatory as Washington. The method py
which that institution sets the nations
clocks is interesting and ingenious. In the
first place. il has the corporation of every
national telegraph and telephone line IN the
country. AT the hour OF noon in washing
ton. eastern time, every railroad and tele-
graph clock hand in the country is set to
correspond with the Washington noon.
There is great master clock, kept in an
air-ught mOisture-pr proof vault, in which
harumetric pressure and uniform temper
ature is maintained the latter being a.
complished by the aid OF a thermustat and
a small electric light. This clock is checked
M several times a week by observations ot
the fixed Or clock stars through the transit
telescope The nautical almanac shows the
exact position OF each clock star for every
hour. minute and second in the year, and
with the transit telescope and the nautical
almanac the astronomer making the OBJ
servatiOn is enabled TO calculate the exact
time to the minutest fraction Of second.
He does this and sets the master clock scA
curdingiy
There are three other clocks which are
set BY the master clock These always are
ready to be switched into the telegTaphtc
circuit At II :55 a m. they are switched
into the Geographic circuits and every con-
neCted clock in the country east OF the
Pacific time belt ticks In consonance With
the clocks on Georgetown Heights. In the
middle Of each minute a second Ia skipped
the twenty -ninth-and at the end of each
minute five seconds are skipped until the
last minute is reached. when there IL
silence Of ten seconds. and then every hand
moves to L. o'clock in the eastern belt, II
o clock in central, ana 10 o'clock in noun
tain Thus is the country's time set right
for another twenty-four hours
There is said to be no government that
maintains many time balls as the United
States IL has some twenty OF these in
all the principal ports and other important
points throughout the country, II IN said
that the one in Washington is the most
I expensive small institution the govern
1 ment has. Every day at noon the majority
Of the government employees. from Capitol
Hill to Georgetown, stop to watch thu time
! ball on the state, war and navy building.
While a nation has to figure on hour
variations. world must figure
variations of a full day. IL became neces-
sary, when giobs-wde travel ceased to be
an unsual thing, that somewhere a ship
should turn back Its time fun day when
( going west, just as a railroad train turns
back its time an hour when crossing a time
/ belt from east to west. When travelling
east the time must be moved up day.
| When crossing the International date line
/ from west to east the ship adds a day. Thus
a vessel coming from Japan, II it reached
! the International date line on Monday
J October "A, would repeat that day in its
log; while II IL were bound TO Japan 1t
would jump Tuesday October IS, and enter
Il Wednesday, October %.
This international date line Theoretically
is the 1sOth meridian. precisely as far west
OF Greenwich as 1t liz east OF that point
But practically it extends through the pa
cific from the Aleutian to the FIJI islands
/ Greenwich has been made the prime
meridian Of the whole world Everything
is either east or west OF Greenwich The
nations agreed upon that meridian az the
starting point of all longitude because OF
the fact that at the time OF the asrse-
menL 50 per cent OF all the vessels and n
per cent Of all the tonnage that sailed the
seas used the Greenwich meridian a. the
basis off all calculations
nj F11DEErc .. KAsxxM
Tomorrow-HunicipaI ProRrsaa.