NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2014 Mar 1, 23:03 -0500
Hi Don
I realize it was a long time ago, and you were a young boy by your own admission, but I hope we can squeeze a few more details out of you! Its okay if you don't remember or you weren't privy to the info.
You mentioned an Inspector who traveled around with a master clock. Did you ever see that master clock? Did they transfer that time to a station master clock? And then from the station to the conductors?
When you said "he could compare" his watch to the master clock, I assume you meant your dad. Could you explain a bit more how he did that comparison?
Brad
I can shed some light on this since my father was a railroad engineer (driver, to the UK folks).When I was a small boy in East Texas in the early 40's, I remember going down to the jewelry store in our town when he was home and comparing his pocket watch to the large standard pendulum clock on the wall. The link to standard time was the inspector who traveled up and down the railroad with his standard watch. The railroads had extensive private telephone/telegraph networks and I expect that he could periodically compare his watch with the standard railroad clock. My father got his first wrist watch in the '50's, I think.On time performance was important to all railroad personnel.Thanks for prompting this flash beck.Don Bray************************************** Kepler finds 674 Earth size planets http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/Kepler-Mission-Hits-3500-Candidates-230867391.html New images from Japan at http://benbray.com/ Don E. Bray Mail P. O. Box 10315, College Station, Texas 77842-0315 Office/Cellular 979-492-9534 Faith in science http://debclltx.com/
On Mar 01, 2014, at 09:01 PM, Norm Goldblatt <ngold---.net> wrote:How interesting. Of course, this begs the question, but what about Church Bells? Big Ben? Maybe it was more important to be locally in sync with your townspeople than to be absolutely correct.
Norm
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