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Geoffrey, you wrote:
"To this end, a book called "A Treatise on the Transit Instrument
as Applied to the Determination of Time" was written in 1882 by Latimer
Clark. Unfortunately, although Google books tantalizingly lists the
contents of the book, it does not seem to be available."

This seems to be a corrupt file. The scans are there, but they don't load.
Puzzling on it for a few minutes, I discovered that the OCR version is
reasonably complete (towards the upper right of the Google page, click "View
plain text"). The tables, as usual, do not convert to text properly, but
they're probably not relevant anyway.

 From the text version, I learned,
"The instrument is adjusted quietly by the fireside, and when the time
approaches he lays the telescope in its stand and looks through it, and at
the proper moment he sees the one star he is seeking pass across the wires
and give him his time to the fraction of a second. This operation is, in
fact, so easy that his gardener or coachman may be taught to use the
instrument in his absence almost as accurately as himself, and such persons
soon learn to take a pleasure in the occupation and in rendering themselves
expert."

That is excellent news for me. I have found lately that my coachman seems
under-employed. I would not want him to become "lazy" for lack of labor. I
shall at once set him the task of measuring delta-T on a daily basis and
recording his observations in an appropriate logbook.

 -FER
:-)



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