NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Cable Repair Story
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2003 Mar 25, 00:28 +0000
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2003 Mar 25, 00:28 +0000
Fred Hebard said- >Ah yes, the cable was broken, so they couldn't get the correct time >piped down to them! That's why the sun sights. George Huxtable has >once again cut through to daylight. Fred, you are too kind... >But is there evidence that correct time was being transmitted by cable? Yes indeed, it was one of the first and most important applications of the telegraph. Wherever it reached, longitudes were quickly obtained from the accurate time that was distributed. The previous method for determining longitude difference between two places was to send an observer to and fro between them, carrying many chronometers. Howes states that in 1845, over 60 chronometers were sent 16 times between the observatories of Altona (Hamburg) and Pulkova (St Petersburg! On 23 March, under the thread name "Sextant accuracy and anomalous dip" I said- "Derek Howse, in "Greenwich Time and the Longitude" (1997), says that Airy reported a time of passage of 1/2 second from Greenwich to Paris in 1854, and a second (nearly) to Valentia [Ireland] in 1862." I got that wrong: the time to Paris should have been 1/12 second, not 1/2 second. Sorry about that. Howse's engaging book describes how the telegraph was first used for determining longitude differences in the USA in 1844. Airy, astronomer royal, established a system for distributing Greenwich time by "galvanism" (electricity) as early as 1852, which was shortly extended all round Britain via the railway telegraph lines. A link to the Paris Observatory allowed a precise measure of the longitude difference between London and Paris. The time distribution system ran automatically, and provided time signals within London every hour and outside London once or twice a day. For a minute either side of the time-signal, communication traffic on the cable was interrupted to give it a clear passage. The advent of the telegraph gave a great boost to the precise mapping of the world, and ensured that time-balls at ports dropped at an exact time, for setting ships' chronometers. No use to the navigator at sea, of course: he would have to wait for radio. George Huxtable. ================================================================ contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. ================================================================