timely thoughts

[marycatelli]

I was looking at some stereotypically steampunk  art -- all those clocks -- and it occurred to me that in that era, clocks weren't all that accurate.

The ball dropping in Times Square is a relic of the days when many places had a ball dropping to indicate noon, and all sorts of people, on seeing it start to drop, would take out their watches and be ready to adjust to that time.  Astronomical observatories would sell the time as a service, and the telegraph was crucial because it allowed them to transmit it.  (Thus helping move toward time zones.)

I also note that the budding science of meteorology also encouraged time zones.  If you had weather stations reporting in, you needed a standard time to correlate the reports.