Welcome to the NavList Message Boards.

NavList:

A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

Compose Your Message

Message:αβγ
Message:abc
Add Images & Files
    Name or NavList Code:
    Email:
       
    Reply
    Re: Railroad Time
    From: Frank Reed
    Date: 2014 Mar 2, 11:46 -0800

    The short answer is, yes, by telegraph. Observatories, especially government-sanctioned observatories like the USNO in the US, performed daily transit observations while also maintaining large ensembles of chronometers (for the cloudy days!) and transmitted the time to the principal telegraph offices, both government and commercial.

    There's a nice article in "Sky with ocean joined : proceedings of the sesquicentennial symposia of the U.S. Naval Observatory, December 5 and 8, 1980 / edited by Steven J. Dick and LeRoy E. Doggett" which you can read online here:
    http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822002462802

    Somewhere in there (I read it a few weeks ago), there's an interesting comment about other observatories complaining about the USNO's monopoly of time dissemination to Western Union. It seems that some observatories were largely funded in the late 19th century by selling time signals.

    -FER
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    NavList message boards and member settings: www.fer3.com/NavList
    Members may optionally receive posts by email.
    To cancel email delivery, send a message to NoMail[at]fer3.com
    ----------------------------------------------------------------

       
    Reply
    Browse Files

    Drop Files

    NavList

    What is NavList?

    Get a NavList ID Code

    Name:
    (please, no nicknames or handles)
    Email:
    Do you want to receive all group messages by email?
    Yes No

    A NavList ID Code guarantees your identity in NavList posts and allows faster posting of messages.

    Retrieve a NavList ID Code

    Enter the email address associated with your NavList messages. Your NavList code will be emailed to you immediately.
    Email:

    Email Settings

    NavList ID Code:

    Custom Index

    Subject:
    Author:
    Start date: (yyyymm dd)
    End date: (yyyymm dd)

    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site