Robert Wauchope ( Royal Navy officer ) Robert Wauchope , ( 1788 – 1862 ) was a British admiral and inventor of the time ball . He was the fifth son of Andrew Wauchope ( d . 1823 ) of Niddrie - Marischall , Midlothian , Scotland , and Alice Baird ( d . 1814 ) , daughter of William Baird of Newbyth . He joined the Royal Navy in 1802 , was commissioned in 1808 , and served in the Napoleonic wars , notably as a lieutenant in Captain Samuel Pym ' s disastrous attack on Mauritius in August 1810 . After the destruction of his ship , the " Magicienne " , Wauchope set off in a cutter to Réunion , 140 miles away , to warn Commodore Josias Rowley . He was picked up by Rowley the next day , and took part in Admiral Albemarle Bertie ' s capture of Mauritius in December 1810 . He was promoted to captain in 1814 after which he commanded . He visited Napoleon on St Helena 1816 and was stationed for the next three years at the Cape and St Helena . He became " born again of the Holy Spirit " ( " Short Narrative " , 84 ) in 1819 and expressed his disapproval to Admiral Robert Plampin of his " living openly with a kept mistress " ( ibid , 87 ) . His religious views contributed to him spending all but four years thereafter on half pay . He married in 1822 Anne Carnegie , fourth daughter of Sir David Carnegie , bt . , and settled in Easter Duddingston , Midlothian and later at Moorhouse Hall in Cumberland . Their only child died a minor in 1844 . It was then essential for the calculation of longitude that a ship ' s marine chronometer be accurate , but the astronomical calculations to ensure accuracy were such that could only conveniently be made in observatories . In 1818 Wauchope became interested in developing a method of signalling from an observatory to ships the exact time so that the chronometers on board could be rated . He advised the Admiralty of his " Plan for ascertaining the rates of chronometers by signal " , which described his " time ball " , a large hollow metal sphere rigged on a pole and attached to a mechanism so that it might be dropped at an exact time each day . In 1829 a test was made of his device at Portsmouth on the south coast of England , where the Royal Naval Academy was situated . In 1833 time balls were constructed at Greenwich , and in 1836 at Liverpool and Edinburgh . Wauchope submitted his scheme to American and French ambassadors when they visited England . The US Naval Observatory was established in Washington D . C . and the first American time ball went into service in 1845 . In 1834 his brother - in - law , Admiral Patrick Campbell , invited him to be his flag captain . Wauchope accepted on the condition that no prostitutes were to be allowed on board the ship . His insistence on this resulted in him being summoned before Sir Thomas Hardy the First Sea Lord , who ordered him to resign his commission . Wauchope told Sir Thomas : " It is written that whoremongers shall not enter heaven " ( ibid , 103 ) , and appealed to Sir James Graham , the First Lord of the Admiralty . He was allowed to take command of " HMS Thalia " in June 1834 and was again stationed at the Cape where he became an intimate friend of Sir John Herschel . In 1836 - 7 he patrolled off West Africa to intercept slavers . His active naval career ended on his return to England in 1838 . He retired to Dacre Lodge in Cumberland . In 1849 he was promoted to rear admiral , in 1856 to vice admiral and in 1861 , the year before his death , to Admiral of the Blue . In that year he published an anti - Darwinian pamphlet , " Proofs of the Possible Cause and Recent Date of the Boulder Drift , Connecting it with the Post Tertiary Period and Noachian Deluge " , and wrote his memoirs , " A Short Narrative " , for the instruction of his great nephew , Andrew Gilbert Wauchope . At the time of his death , time balls were in use on every inhabited continent . Although rendered obsolete on the introduction of radio time signals , operational examples survive atop the Royal Observatories at Greenwich and Cape Town , at Sydney Observatory , at Lyttelton in New Zealand , on Nelson ' s Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh , and at Deal . He is buried in Dacre Churchyard , Penrith , Cumbria , England . ( i . e . near Dacre Lodge ) under an unusual tombstone that is triangular in cross section . The grave is immediately on the right as one enters the churchyard .