Re: Time Ball, was Signal Stations


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Posted by Adam Quinan on October 26, 2007 at 16:34:03 from 192.75.48.150 user Adam.

In Reply to: Re: Time Ball, was Signal Stations posted by Laurence Monkhouse on October 26, 2007 at 16:16:35:

The purpose of the noon or one o'clock gun is to allow ships to compare their chronometer time with local noon rather than to alert them to determine their position. After all if you can see the signal/hear the gun, you probably know your position already.

Aboard ships, the purpose of taking a noon shot was to reset the watch system as a ship travelled east or west. In the days before standard time zones, people operated on local noon and this would change daily during an east-west voyage. If you maintained a standard four hours for each watch it would migrate around acording to the local clock time so that the morning watch would become an afternoon one or vice versa.


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