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Based upon a rather hasty bit of research concerning how it
was possible to synchronize clocks in different parts
of the world it seems that galileo, cassini and others
that I cannot credit due to ignorance came up with the
idea of creating an astronomical clock based on the
eclipses of jupiters moons.  By creating accurate
tables of the times of the eclipses it was possible
to set clocks to both local time and greenwich time
to perhaps a few seconds at locations quite distant
from each other.  Although not a feasible method
for ships on the ocean, they could at least compare
their clocks in ports that had observatories monitoring
jupiters moons.

The next question is say at greenwich, how was it decided
to set the local time to a particular clock time say 12:00
noon to the second?  Was it a convention or was their some
method useful to any nearby observatory?

   

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