Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-05-07

"Watchman, what Of the night? Is
your watch regulated and set? II not,
note the signal which goes out three
Naval Observatory by radio and tele-
graph and learn to be on time, to the
thousandth part of a second"
Hitch your chronometer to a star!
That will be the theme of the next
scientific event, the meeting of the
American Society of Horology, to open
at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning in
the Science Building. To that meet
ing are invited all chronic procras-
tinators, all employees who have to run
their last three blocks and get into
office" before the clock strikes nine,
when they would lose half a day from
their annual vacations as penalty Tor
their oversleeping. All men and wom-
en- are invited who are indifferent to
punctuality in keeping their engage
mentS, whether for business or bridge
or the opening of a public meeting.
It will be especially interesting to note
whether the horologists begin their own
meetings on the dot-ten of the clock,
men and "horologists'' are habitually
punctual.
What is time? Or what was it before
Einstein? Has he not let the clock of
the universe run down? Has he not
annihilated time and space?
Aristotle defined time as multitude
of parts of motion" That explains the
motions" of folks running when they
are late. That highbrow, Laplace, gives
it more dignity by explaining that time
is the impression which a series of OBJ
jects leaves upon the memory, and of
which we are certain the existence has
been successive"
So time is just another Bostonian
state of mind"
The modern notion that thine is
money is utterly inconsistent with
Laplace'S definition. What a banker
Laplace would have made, If he had
undertaken to compute his interest on
an impression! When the 80, so or 80
days fit around so fantastically-why
that's only an "impreSSion"-and it's
strange how the debtor or the creditor
works up a estate of mind" over it.
The author of THE TaliSman" de-
clareS that Time is seen not and felt
not; it is but a shadowy name, a
succession of breathings measured forth
by night with the clank of bell. by
day with a shadow crossing along a
gladstone"
All, without time there is no music;
without time there is no life; without
time there is no beginning and no
end-only monotonouS eternity. Time
heals griefs, mendS sorrows, SoftenS
hurts, makes callous tender hearts,
emasculates good resolutions, brings
buds to bloom and dawns to glory.
Shakespeare said Time had "a lazy
foot" yet, from the beginning to the
end, crime flies" with the swift wings
of Mercury on his ankles. Time, the
aviator halts for no man.
I'VE push Time from US, and we wish
him back"
The ancients measured time in sun
shine by its shadow on Gladstone.
1t has been proposed that Washington's
525-foot Monument should be harnessed
to a great circular gladstone with
a radius of 400 or 500 feet, as
is Cleopatra's Needle before st.
should be inscribed the hours of
the day. Yet astronomers mock at the
idea that one circumference for the
dial would tell the time that goes creep
ing by, in Summer as in Winter. What
should be that radius which would
catch the tip of shadow of the peak
of the Monument when the sun is in
April or July, and again in November
or December? Or who will set the
course around the earth" in certain
months than does a starbeam, and
longer than the actual clock-time from
its crossing our meridian and coming
back around the earth to the same
meridian-half an hour longer for some
trips than for others-that dallying Old
Sol! We would have about as much
difficulty in setting our watches by
the sundial as did the drunken man
who watched the conductor on a street.
car ring up his fares on a dial regis
ter and tried to regulate his own watch
by that dial. No mechanical time
measure synchronizes with the vacillat-
ing sun, owing to the elliptical orbit
of the earth through which it travels
round the year, and the rakish tilt of
the worlds axis-the giddy flapperl
So a sundial needs an interpreter