Telling Time In The Dark

1895

It Needs Only a Little Calculation and Regular Habits.

"What time is it?"

"I think I can tell you without looking."

He drew out his watch and held it up close to his ear and slowly turned the stem winder. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," he counted, and then he said: "That means 72 minutes. I wound the watch up tightly at 8 o'clock, and so the time ought to be about 12 minutes past 4. Let's see how near I came to it. Well, it's 4:18. I was only six minutes off."

The other was regarding him with amazement. "Do you mean to say that you can tell the time of day by winding up your watch?"

"Not exactly, but I can come mighty near it — usually within ten minutes — and it's very simple too. All you have to know is how long one tick in winding up will run the watch. I'll explain to you. Suppose that at 3 o'clock I wind up my watch until it is tight, as we say — that is, until another turn of the winder would apparently break a spring. At 5 o'clock I wind the watch again and find that the winder clicks 12 times before the watch is wound up to the place where it sticks. Then you know that 12 ticks will run the watch 120 minutes, and that one click represents ten minutes of time."

"What good is it to know that?"

"Well, suppose you go to bed at 11 o'clock tonight, and on retiring wind up your watch and put it under your pillow. During the night you wake up and wonder what time it is. You don't want to get up and light the gas. All you have to do is to pull that watch out from under The pillow, hold it to your ear and count the ticks as you wind. If you count 18, then you know that the watch has run down 180 minutes since 11 o'clock, and that the time must be very near 2 o'clock. To be sure, you can't tell the exact time, but you can generally got within a quarter of an hour of it."

"Wouldn't the same rule hold good for a clock or a watch which is wound with a key?"

"I dare say it would, but I never tried it on anything except a stem winding watch. I know a blind man who always tells time by winding his watch and counting the ticks. His sense of touch is quite delicate, and he can wind up his watch three or four times a day and then calculate within ten minutes of the correct time." — Chicago Record.

An American Custom

1895

We Want the Correct Time and Endeavor to Get It.

Of course if you walk on Chestnut street and take notice as you go along — all people should have observing eyes — you will see men stopping to compare their watches with the chronometers in the jewelers' windows. And if you have traveled abroad I venture to say you never saw a foreigner so comparing the time of his watch.

The fact is this is a custom peculiarly American. We place more value on time here — our minutes are precious, we are so busy, so eager in the race for wealth — time is indeed money with us.

A friend of mine who goes abroad every season was chatting about this matter to me and said:

"Do you know that the Americans buy the most expensive watches? I was talking to one of the most celebrated watchmakers in all Europe on this very subject, and I was surprised to hear him say that his best watches — the most expensive make, repeaters and the like — were mostly sold in the American market. He said, too, that foreigners do not care for such correct time as the Americans. If their watches are a few minutes too fast or too slow, it does not concern them.

"I was myself impressed with the truth of these remarks by the watchmaker when, a few days afterward, I was in a railroad station in Paris and saw two public clocks four minutes apart! Another time I set my watch by one public clock in London and the next day found by another public clock in the same city, only a dozen blocks away, that my watch was six minutes slow by that clock! Yes, you may be sure that the Americans are the only nation who care for the exact time." — Philadelphia Call.

Only Today

1910

The future is an illusion; it never arrives; it flies before you as you advance. Always it is today — and after death and a thousand years it is today. You have great deeds to perform and you must do them now. — Charles Ferguson.

Note: Maybe if the future did exist, Mr. Ferguson could come to it and get some royalties from Eckhart Tolle.

Shrapnel (Pointed Humor)

1916

A doctor's pills may cure some ill — but not ill humor.

Courtship is a game in which a girl plays her heart against a man's diamond.

If women looked like the pictures in fashion magazines men would take to the woods.

It isn't necessary for a man to be a hypnotist in order to get his mind concentrated on the toothpick.

If time were money, the average man would have his watch geared to run forty-eight hours a day.

A young widow knows that the easiest way to catch a successor to the late lamented is to run away from him.

If the phoenix of common sense rises from the ashes of a fool's money the conflagration has not been in vain.

Possibly an honest man might be otherwise if an opportunity worth while were to knock at his front door.

Keep Time By The Sundial

1912

In Beautifying Its Forest Park This Kansas Town Has Added a Utility

Ottawa, Kan. — The big city has no corner on civic beauty. Nor are pretty parks and ingenious decorative schemes confined to estates of landed gentry. A country town can, and often does, furnish excellent examples of artistic treatment of bits of woodland.

Ottawa has no copyrighted system of boulevards other than its well paved streets, but the folks who make their homes here pride themselves upon their parks — there are two of them — City Park and Forest Park.

In Forest Park there are samples of the ordinary park embellishments, such as a fountain, cemented fish pond, lettered flower beds and sanitary drinking fountains. But the newest addition is a floral sundial. It is the town's latest civic pride.

J. H. Eason, park keeper for Ottawa, planned and constructed the natural timepiece this summer, it being an excellent summer for the use of sundials. He fashioned it according to he minutest directions of chronometer and sundial experts. As a result the dial is accurate to the minute when the sun's changes are figured — and Mr. Eason has provided a card with printed directions for each day of the year. The number of minutes the sun is "slow" or "fast," in comparison with the standard meridian, is placed in plain View Of park visitors. Anyone may read the card and set his watch the exact time.

The dial is fourteen feet in diameter and the indicator, a pointed post, is eight feet above the ground. Numerals of cement number the hours upon which the shadow of the indicator falls in turn from sunup to sundown. Lines of foliage mark the half-hours and the quarter-hours. Pigmy hedge forms a decorative design in front of the figures.

Old Ways of Keeping Time

1910

Devices That Were Adopted by the Egyptians, Romans and Early English People

As far back as history will take us we find that there was always some crude means of reckoning time. The clock is, of course, a comparatively modern invention, the first mechanical ones that would keep the time even approximately having been made in 1250 A.D.

The early Egyptians divided the day and night each into 12 hours, a custom adopted by the Jews or Greeks probably from the Babylonians.

The day is said to have been first divided into hours in 293 B.C., when a sun dial was erected in the temple of Quirinus at Rome. As early as 158 B.C. the time was called in the streets of Rome by regular public criers.

In the early history of England we are told that the people found a means of measuring time by the use of wax candles. It was reckoned that three inches of candle would last an even hour.

Among most of the nations of the north day began at sunrise, while among the Athenians and Jews it began at sunset. With the ancient Romans it began, as it does with us, at midnight.

Good-By to the Train Boy

1901

Good-by to the train boy. On January 1, 1901, on two important American railroad systems, the experiment, heretofore tried tentatively, of excluding from their cars all peddling of popcorn, peanuts, cigars, newspapers, games, caramels, matches and magazines, was inaugurated and the "train boy" summarily done away with.

Against this innovation serious and urgent opposition was expected, for the train boy, with his wares, had come to be regarded, if not as a cherished, certainly as an unavoidable, incident of American passenger travel by railroad.

In the evolution of modern travel to its present point of excellence, the uniformed conductor distinguishable only by his metal badge, the loud-shouting brakeman, and car coupler disappeared, but the "candy or train boy" with his stock of peanuts and confectionery had lingered on, a burden to the patience of many travelers and an unnecessary survival of archaic railroading.


The Time in Spain

When the clock struck twelve on the dawn of the new century Spain inaugurated a change in the methods of computing time. Hereafter the clocks of that kingdom will count the hours from 1 to 24, instead of going as far 12 and then beginning all over again as they did the day before. The Madrid or Barcelona business man will rise at 7; go to work at 8:30; lunch at 12; quit for the day at 17; dine at 18; go to the theater at 20; reach home at 21:30; lunch 22:42; and retire at 23:30. —Exchange.

Sandglasses Still Used To Measure Time

1900

A Sure and Silent Timer

Strange to say, the sandglass is still used to measure varying periods of time. The size depends upon the purposes to which they are to be put. The hour glass is still in use in the sick room, and in the music room, in both places affording a sure and silent indication of the progress of time.

Half-hour glasses are used in schools, and fifteen-minute glasses are used for medical purposes, and the sandglass also goes into the kitchen as an aid to exact cooking. There are also ten-minute glasses, five-minute and three-minute glasses, the two latter being used to time the boiling period of eggs. The three-minute sandglass is called an "egg boiler." Sand-glasses are also used for scientific purposes and on shipboard.

The sand is carefully prepared by a thorough cleaning, including boiling. It is then baked dry, and then ground into the requisite fineness and uniformity, as sharp sand would be likely to become wedged in the opening between the two sections of the glass. The sand is then introduced into the glass through an opening left for that purpose in the end of one bulb, the opening then being sealed, the right quantity in each sand glass is gauged by actually timing the flow from one part of the glass to the other, and every glass is individually treated like a good thermometer. The glasses are usually mounted in cylindrical frames or holders, so that the twin bulbs can be seen at all times.


Why We Are Like the Crow

Aside from the special question of profit and loss, we have a warm side toward the crow, he is so much like ourselves, said the late Henry Ward Beecher. He is lazy, and that is human; he is cunning.and that is human. He thinks his own color is best, and loves to hear his own voice, which are eminent traits of humanity. He will never work when he can get another to work for him — a genuine human trait. He eats whatever he can get his claws upon, and is less mischievous with a belly full than when hungry and this is like man. Take off their wings and put them in breeches, and crows would make fair average men. Give men wings and reduce their smartness a little, and many of them would be almost good enough to be crows.

Time-Telling Inventions

1914

It seems that the invention of clocks and watches was not the fruit of a single discovery, but was really a slow growth, side by side with many other advances in civilization, and of course the earliest clocks and instruments were sun dials.

The invention of the sun dial is generally attributed to a Grecian astronomer who died about 547 B. C.

The dial was followed by the hourglass, and this by the water clock, which marked time by the escape of water through an orifice. These were introduced into Rome about 158 B. C., but are believed to have been in use in Chaldea and Egypt for a hundred years previous to that date.


Ants Build Skyscrapers

West African anthills are veritable giants, frequently standing 40 feet high, says the Wide World.

These anthills are shaped something like a sugar loaf and are divided into hundreds of tiny rooms. They have, needless to say, myriads of inhabitants and these are all busily occupied in various ways, forming tunnels, making roads, gathering food and watching over the eggs and youngsters.

The natives are afraid to touch these hills, except from a distance, with firearms. The ants often make their strongholds around trees, and they are built very solidly, with sides sometimes 20 inches thick.

The inside is hollow, and at the top there is a sort of attic. The "royal cell," where the queen ant lives, is always found on the ground floor. This good lady is a prisoner, but is carefully fed by her busy subjects, the eggs she lays being immediately carried away and deposited in "rooms" set apart for the purpose.

No More Last Forty Winks

1914

Fiend Has Invented an Alarm Clock That Simply Insists on One's Rising in the Morning

It has often seemed, after the announcement of an invention to which the attention of the entire civilized world has been called, that the human mind could scarcely invent anything more and fashion it in material form, but the countless dreams of inventors continue to be realized in astounding numbers.

Every week, every month, the trade journals advertise and comment upon new things in the lines which they represent and publish new ideas which this material labor-saving age seizes and makes its own.

An alarm clock which awakens you with the words of a disgusted wife who has breakfast on the table, and a large vessel which carries submarines over long distances by means of a "pouch" are among the newest offerings.

As an ever present need, the alarm clock will probably be put into more general household use than the ship with the "pouch" for carrying submarines. In the evening before retiring you set the clock for 6:30; at 6:30 you will probably get up. Here is what will waken you:

"Six-thirty, six-thirty, six-thirty; time to get up; get up, can't you? Get up you miserable, lazy man. Get up, get up, get up!"

The first clock of this kind was exhibited in 1900, but it cost $2,500 to make it. The present offering costs $25. If you are awake in the middle of the night and wish to know the time, press a button and the clock will tell you the nearest quarter hour as: "Two-fifteen," if it happens to be 2:13 or 2:18. The phonographic record is on an endless belt and the grooves in which the voice vibrations are recorded run lengthwise of the belt. The belt continues to give out sound until shut off when once started. So far the clocks have been supplied with belts which talk in thirty-five languages.

Why the Years Fly Swiftly for the Aged

1914

Every person of fifty or more is familiar with the fact that as one grows old time apparently passes much more rapidly. "It seems but yesterday" is a phrase often used with reference to duration sometimes of years, and the phrase expresses an actual fact. Of course time does not vary its course. The acceleration is only apparent. Recent psychological researches ascribe it almost entirely to a gradual failure in memory.

In earlier life each day stands out clearly by reason of association with the events that occur therein. These are retained in the memory and help to preserve the sequence of the passing years. But as soon as the mysterious biochemical changes which herald the approach of old age occur the memory begins to fail. Much that happens in intervals between important events is forgotten, with the result that those intervals seem shorter than they really are.

The time between falling into a dreamless slumber and awakening therefrom may be a matter of hours, but because the mind is blank during sleep it seems practically nothing. Dreaming lengthens the apparent interval because it gives the memory some data by which to reckon time. Therefore the more one dreams the longer does his period of sleep appear to him — that is to say, one's apprehension of time is largely dependent upon his memory. The more faulty the latter the more erroneous the former. The years fly by so swiftly for the aged because the aged forget so much of what occurs in them.

Letter to Be Opened Century From Now

1914

AKRON, Ohio. — Mayor Rockwell wrote a letter to the person who will be mayor of Akron 100 years hence. The epistle tells the future mayor of the present debt, the names of all city officials, the problems confronting the municipality and the political situation in Akron in 1914.

The letter will be sealed and addressed to "His Honor, Mayor of Akron, 2014," marked with instructions not to be opened or molested until that year and placed in a bank deposit vault to lie for a century.

The salutation in the letter will fit either a man or a woman mayor.

Comment: So, I wonder what are the chances that this letter is still in the bank deposit vault waiting. Someone in Akron, please check into this.

The Growing Passion for Music

1906

By Rupert Hughes

Whatever the percentage of American musical illiteracy may have been a few years ago, it is beyond denial that there is a tremendous change at work. The whole nation is feeling a musical uplift like a sea that swells above a submarine earthquake.

The trouble hitherto has not been that Americans were of a fibre that was dead to musical thrill. Our hearts are not of flannel, and we are not a nation of soft pedals. We have simply been too busy hacking down trees and making bricks without straw, to go to music school. But now, the sewing machine, the telephone, the typewriter and the trolley car are sufficiently installed to give us leisure to take up music and see what there is in it.

We are beginning to learn that, while The Arkansas Traveler, Money Musk, and Nellie Was a Lady are all very well in their way, there are higher and more interesting things in music. There is an expression which musicians hear every day: "I am passionately fond of music but I don't understand it. I know what I like, but I can't tell why."

This speech has become a byword among trained musicians, but it indicates a widespread condition that is at once full of pathos and of hope. America as a nation is "passionately fond of music." It needs only an education in the means of expression. — Good Housekeeping.



Much Against Being Rich

1906

Bishop Gore was the preacher at the opening of the English Church Congress. "The late master of Balliol," he told the great congregation, "used often to say, in his detached way, that he was afraid there was much more in the New Testament against being rich and in favor of being poor than we liked to recognize."

The Longest Year on Record — 46 B.C.

1907

The year B. C. 46, by order of Julius Caesar, the then reigning Roman emperor, contained 445 days. To clear away all the confusion which had previously existed in reconciling the lunar with the solar year, Caesar, with the help of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, undertook a thorough reform of the calendar. He effected it by making the year now called 46 B. C., "the year of confusion," consist of 445 days and the succeeding years of 365 days, with the exception of every fourth year, which was to consist of 366. This method is called the Julian calendar.

The number of days in the months from January to December before Caesar's time had been respectively 29, 28, 31, 29, 31, 29, 31, 29, 29, 31, 29, 29. These numbers Caesar changed to 31 and 30 alternately, with the exception of February, which was to have 29 in ordinary years and 30 in leap years. In honor of himself he changed to July the name of the month that followed June. The pontiffs in applying the Julian calendar went wrong by inserting leap year every three years instead of every four years, and this continued till the year now called 8 B. C., when the Emperor Augustus ordained there should be no leap year for twelve years, which made leap year occur in 4 A. D. At the same time Augustus gave his own name to the month following July, adding one day to it, which he took away from February.

Old Style and New Style Calendars

1874

When the calendar of Julius Caesar was reformed under Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, by a brief it was ordered that October 5th should be called October 15th. The adoption of the Gregorian calendar in England took place September, 1752, when the 3rd of the month was called the 14th. To change Old Style to New add 11 days. George Washington was born Feb. 11, 1732, O.S., but adding the 11 days, we celebrate the 22nd in honor of his birth. If the revolution of the earth around the sun occupied exactly 365¼ days, the calendar would never need correction. As that is about 11 minutes longer than the real period, we add a day every four years to February, omitting it in 1700, 1800, and 1900.


A Solemn Thought

Ten thousand human beings set forth together on their journey. After ten years one-third at least have disappeared. At the middle point of the common measure of life but half are still upon the road. Faster and faster, as the ranks grow thinner, they that remain till now become weary and lie down to rest no more. At threescore and ten a band of some four hundred still struggle on. At ninety these have been reduced to a handful of thirty trembling patriarchs. Year after year they fall in diminishing numbers. One lingers, perhaps, a lonely marvel, till the century is over. We look again and the work of death is finished.

Why Sixty Minutes Made an Hour

1910

The hour is divided into 60 minutes simply because in old Babylon there existed, by the side of the decimal system of notation, another system, the sexagesimal, which counted by sixties. There is no number which has so many divisors as 60. The Babylonians divided the sun's daily journey into 24 parasangs, each parasang, or hour, being divided into 60 minutes. The parasang is about equal to a German mile, and the Babylonians compared the progress made by the sun during one hour to the progress made by a good walker during the same time.


Discouraging

On arriving at San Bernardino after a five months' prospecting trip in the desert two California prospector found that one of their packmules had developed a limp. An examination of the mule's hoof revealed a gold nugget, worth probably $50. The prospectors have no idea in what part of the desert the nugget was picked up.


Olive Industry Safe

There is little prospect of the olive industry of this country being overdone, for there are only three localities in this country where the olives will thrive.


Caterpillars Ravage Trees

Washington. — Shade trees of Washington, famed for their number and beauty, are undergoing an attack from a horde of caterpillars. The trees are being stripped of their foliage rapidly. So numerous are the pests that they have baffled the caretakers' efforts to cope with them. Property owners have joined in the attempt to repel the invaders, but it seems that there is little chance to prevail against them. Some fear for the lives of the trees is expressed.

Words of Wisdom – Look For Happiness in Useful Work

1878

It is but poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

If what is said be not to the purpose a single word is already too much.

As nothing truly valuable can be obtained without industry, so there can be no persevering industry without a deep sense of the value of time.

The most common error of men and women is that of looking for happiness somewhere outside of useful work. It has never yet been found when thus sought, and never will be while the world stands; and the sooner the truth is learned, the better for everyone. If you doubt the proposition, go around among your friends and acquaintances and select those who have the most enjoyment through life. Are they idlers and pleasure-seekers, or are the earnest workers? We know what your answer will be. Of the miserable human beings it has been our fortune or misfortune to know, those were the most wretched who had retired from useful employment in order to enjoy themselves.

Truth will never die; the stars will grow dim, the sun will pale his glory, but truth will be ever young. Integrity, uprightness, honesty, love, goodness, these are all imperishable. No grave can ever entomb these immortal principles. They have been in prison, but they have been freer than before; those who enshrined them in their hearts have been burned at the stake, but out of their ashes other witnesses have arisen. No sea can drown, no storm can wreck, no abyss can swallow up the everlasting truth. You cannot kill goodness and integrity and righteousness; the way that is consistent with these must be a way everlasting.

Uncle Sam Regulates Clocks, Time By Fixed Star

1903

HOW TIME IN THE U.S. IS MADE.

Our Uncle Samuel Always Regulates His Clocks by a Fixed Star.

Strange as it may seem, Uncle Sam does not make use of the sun for reckoning time, but, as already described in St. Nicholas, he turns his attention to some of the regular, steady-going stars, or "fixed stars," as they are called.

Every clear night an astronomer with a big telescope looks at certain of these stars and makes his calculations, from which he can tell just when the sun would cross the seventy-fifth meridian. One of the great clocks in the observatory is called the transmitter or sends out the signal that keeps standard time. This clock is set and regulated by the star time, and then every day at three minutes and fifteen seconds before 12 a switch is turned on and the beats of the pendulum of this clock are sent by electricity over the wires to the telegraph offices in Washington and New York.

When the telegraph operators hear this sound on their instruments they know that the noon signal is about to be sent out, and they at once begin to connect the telegraph wires with other towns and cities, until in a minute or two the "tick, tick" of the clock at Washington is heard in hundreds of telegraph offices. The beats stop at ten seconds before 12 as a notice that the next "tick" will be the noon signal, and so as to give the operators time to connect their wires with the standard timeballs and clocks.

There are timeballs in a great many cities — usually on top of some prominent building, where they can easily be seen. The one at Washington is on the roof of the state, war, and navy department building, at the top of a high pole, ready to drop the instant the signal comes over the wire.

In the government offices at Washington and in many places in other cities there are large clocks connected with the observatory by electricity. These are so arranged that when the 12 o'clock signal is flashed over the wires the hands of each one of these clocks spring to 12, no matter what time the clock may show; in this way hundreds of clocks are set to the correct time each day.

Well, the moment the sun is supposed to cross the 75th meridian, the telegraph instruments give a single tick, the timeballs drop, the clocks begin to strike, and everybody in the district knows it is 12 o'clock. — Clifford Howard in St. Nicholas.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 5, 1903, page 2.

Comment: So the famous "ball" that drops on New Year's Eve, is that a "timeball" and does it come from this way of regulating clocks?