In Pursuit of Accurate Timekeeping: Liverpool and Victorian Electrical Horology

Summary

This paper explores how nineteenth-century Liverpool became such an advanced city with regard to public timekeeping, and the wider impact of this on the standardisation of time. From the mid-1840s, local scientists and municipal bodies in the port city were engaged in improving the ways in which accurate time was communicated to ships and the general public. As a result, Liverpool was the first British city to witness the formation of a synchronised clock system, based on an invention by Robert Jones. His method gained a considerable reputation in the scientific and engineering communities, which led to its subsequent replication at a number of astronomical observatories such as Greenwich and Edinburgh. As a further key example of developments in time-signalling techniques, this paper also focuses on the time ball established in Liverpool by the Electric Telegraph Company in collaboration with George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal. This is a particularly significant development because, as the present paper illustrates, one of the most important technologies in measuring the accuracy of the Greenwich time signal took shape in the experimental operation of the time ball. The inventions and knowledge which emerged from the context of Liverpool were vital to the transformation of public timekeeping in Victorian Britain.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrew Warwick and Andrew Mendelsohn for allowing me to carry out research related to this paper at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College London. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at a symposium of the Royal Institute of Navigation titled ‘After Longitude—Modern Navigation in Context’ held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and at the Three Societies Meeting held in Philadelphia, PA. The author is grateful to the members of those audiences for their many constructive comments. I also wish to thank David Edgerton, Michael Kershaw and anonymous referees at Annals of Science for their helpful suggestions for improving this paper. My thanks also go to Adam Perkins for his guidance in consulting the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives at Cambridge University Library. My research was realised thanks to financial support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Notes

¹ G. Airy to D. Stoney, 1 Jan 1866, Papers of George Biddell Airy, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives (in the following abbreviated as RGO MSS), Cambridge University Library, 6/616/29.

² One notable exception is Joyce Scoffield, Bidston Observatory: the Place and the People (Birkenhead, 2006), although his discussion only gives a brief description of the time service provided by the Liverpool Observatory.

³ A. J. Meadows, Greenwich Observatory: the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and Herstmonceux, 1675-1975. vol.2, Recent History (1836–1975) (London, 1975), chapter 3; J. A. Bennett, ‘George Biddell Airy and Horology’, Annals of Science, 37 (1980), 269–85; Derek Howse, Greenwich Time and the Longitude, 2nd edition (London, 1997), chapter 4; Allan Chapman, ‘Standard Time for All: the Electric Telegraph, Airy, and the Greenwich Time Service’, in Semaphores to Short Waves, edited by Frank A. J. L. James (London, 1998), 40–59; Iwan Rhys Morus, ‘“The Nervous System of Britain:” Space, Time and the Electric Telegraph in the Victorian Age’, British Journal for the History of Science, 33 (2000), 455–75; Ben Marsden and Crosbie Smith have argued that Airy's Greenwich served the British imperial world through time distribution which contributed to the useful work of the nation. Ben Marsden and Crosbie Smith, Engineering Empires: a Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2005), 20.

⁴ This role seems to be similar to the function of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in electrotechnical metrology, Simon Schaffer, ‘Late Victorian Metrology and its Instrumentation: a Manufactory of Ohms’, in Invisible Connections: Instruments, Institutions and Science, edited by Robert Bud and Susan Cozzens (Bellingham, 1992), 23–56.

⁵ Gilbert Satterthwaite, ‘Airy's Transit Circle’, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 4 (2001), 115–41; John Mcaleer, ‘“Stargazers at the World's End”: Telescopes, Observatories and ‘Views’ of Empire in the Nineteenth Century British Empire’, British Journal for the History of Science, 46 (2013), 389–413.

⁶ On the concept of observatory techniques in the nineteenth century, see essays in David Aubin, Charlotte Bigg, and H. Otto Sibum, eds., Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture (Durham, 2010).

⁷ Hanna Gay, ‘Clock Synchrony, Time Distribution and Electrical Timekeeping in Britain, 1880–1925’, Past and Present, 181 (2003), 107–40; Caitlin Homes, ‘The Astronomer Royal, the Hydrographer and the Time Ball: Collaborations in Time Signalling 1850-1910’, British Journal for the History of Science, 42 (2009), 381–406; Roger Kinns, ‘Time Balls, Time Guns and Glasgow's Quest for a Reliable Local Time Service’, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 13 (2010), 194–206; idem, ‘The Early History of the Edinburgh Time Ball and Time Gun’, International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology, 81 (2011), 264–9.

⁸ See for example, David Glasgow, Watch and Clock Making (London, 1885), 315–6; Frank Hope-Jones, Electrical Timekeeping, 2nd edition (London, 1976), chapter 4; a striking advancement in the synchronisation of clocks after Jones led by J. A. Lund, Frank Hope-Jones, and William Hamilton Shortt has been examined by James Nye and David Rooney, ‘“Such Great Inventors as the Late Mr. Lund”: an introduction to the Standard Time Company, 1870-1970’, Antiquarian Horology, 30 (2007), 501–23; David Rooney and James Nye, “‘Greenwich Observatory Time for the Public Benefit”: Standard Time and Victorian Networks of Regulation’, British Journal for the History of Science, 42 (2008), 5–30; Robert Miles, Synchronome: Masters of Electrical Timekeeping (Ticehurst, 2011); and for the scientific and social importance of the synchronisation of clocks, see Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time (New York, 2003).

⁹ Charles Aked, A Conspectus of Electrical Timekeeping (Wadhurst, 1976), 16.

¹⁰ See Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985), 225–72; M.-N. Bourguet, Christian Licoppe and H. Otto Sibum, eds., Instruments, Travel and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (London and New York, 2002); Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Basingstoke, 2007).

¹¹ See Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics (Chicago, 2003), chapter 8; James Secord, ‘Knowledge in Transit’, Isis, 95 (2004), 654–72; David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 (London, 2006); Don Leggett, ‘Replication, Re-placing and Naval Science in Comparative Context, c.1868–1904’, British Journal for the History of Science, published online (2012). These studies have addressed the importance of focusing on the local settings of particular sites, in which new ideas, theories, instruments, and techniques are used, adopted, and circulated.

¹² Thomas Baines, Liverpool in 1859: the Port and Town of Liverpool, and the Harbour, Docks and the Commerce of the Mersey in 1859 (Liverpool, 1859), 3.

¹³ Adrian Jarvis, Liverpool Central Docks 1799–1905: an Illustrated History (Liverpool, 1991), chapter 1; Graeme Milne, Trade and Traders in mid-Victorian Liverpool (Liverpool, 2000), chapter 4.

¹⁴ Ian Inkster and Jack Morrell, eds. Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture, 1780–1850 (London, 1983); Simon Naylor, ‘Introduction: Historical Geographies of Science’, British Journal for the History of Science, 38 (2005), 1–12; the study of physical sciences and technologies which would contribute to commerce and navigation such as compass in iron-built ships and the observation of tides was attached utmost importance in Victorian Liverpool. See Alison Winter, ‘“Compasses All Awry”: the Iron Ship and the Ambiguities of Cultural Authority in Victorian Britain’, Victorian Studies, 38 (1994), 69–98; Michael Reidy, ‘Masters of Tidology: the Cultivation of the Physical Sciences in Early Victorian Liverpool’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 152 (2003), 45–71.

¹⁵ On the use of chronometers in the British navy and trading companies, see W. E. May, ‘How the Chronometer Went to Sea’, Antiquarian Horology, 9 (1976), 638–63; Phillip Arnott, ‘Chronometers on East India Company Ships 1800-1833’, Antiquarian Horology, 30 (2007), 481–500; Yuto Ishibashi, ‘“A Place for Managing Government Chronometers”: Early Chronometer Service at the Royal Observatory Greenwich’, The Mariner's Mirror, 99 (2013), 52–66.

¹⁶ Lieutenant Jones to the Mayor of Liverpool, 23 Apr 1836, Observatory Committee Minute Book (in the following abbreviated by OBS MIN), 352/1/1–4, Liverpool Record Office.

¹⁷ W. Lassell to the Liverpool Corporation, 3 Aug 1836; Memorial of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 5 Dec 1838, OBS MIN 352/1/5–8, 23–5.

¹⁸ J. R. Robinson, F. Baily, and T. S. Traill to the Mayor of Liverpool, 14 Sep 1837, OBS MIN 352/1/11–3.

¹⁹ G. Airy to J. Aikin, 10 Jan 1843, J. Aikin to G. Airy, 28 Apr 1843, G. Airy to W. Simms, 28 Apr 1843, W. Simms to G. Airy, 20 Apr 1843, RGO MSS 6/155/39, 70–1, and 74; on the close relationship between Airy and Troughton and Simms, see Michael Hoskin, ‘Astronomers at War: South v. Sheepshanks’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 20 (1989), 175–212.

²⁰ J. Aikin to G. Airy, 1 Mar 1842, G. Airy to J. Aikin, 3 Mar 1842, RGO MSS 6/155/9–11; Molyneux provided astronomical clocks with a large number of observatories in Britain, Europe, and the United States. Christopher Wood, ‘Robert Molyneux's Astronomical Clocks and Chronometers’, Antiquarian Horology, 7 and 9 (1972/75), 607–12, 412–25.

²¹ G. Airy to J. Aikin, 25 May 1843, RGO MSS 6/155/86.

²² Howse (note 3), 86; in 1880, Statues (Definition of Time) Act was passed at Parliament, defining Greenwich Mean Time as the standard of time in Britain.

²³ George Airy, Determination of the Longitude of Valentia in Ireland by Transmission of Chronometers (London, 1845).

²⁴ These tests resulted in Hartnup's major discovery in the late 1840s that changes in temperature produced a greater effect on the going of chronometers than the motion of ships and terrestrial magnetism. Based on this understanding, Hartnup himself invented a new form of balance in chronometers, known as the ‘Hartnup Balance’, to obtain a more perfect compensation in a wide range of temperature. Rupert Gould, The Marine Chronometer: its History and Development (London, 1989), 295; Robert Smith, ‘The Hartnup Balance’, Antiquarian Horology, 14 (1983), 39–45.

²⁵ Ian Bartky and Steven Dick, ‘The First Time Balls’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 12 (1981), 155–64.

²⁶ Robert Wauchope, ‘Description of the Apparatus or Signal-Post for Regulating Chronometers’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 8 (1830), 289–91.

²⁷ G. Airy to J. Franklin, 13 and 23 Dec 1843, RGO MSS 6/155/118–24; on the mechanism of time balls created by Maudslay, Sons & Field, see Roger Kinns and Lesley Abell, ‘The Contribution of Maudslay, Sons & Field to the Development of Time Balls in Australia’, International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, 79 (2009), 59–90.

²⁸ E. Clark to G. Airy, 7 Jan 1853, RGO MSS 6/611/200.

²⁹ Jeffrey Kieve, The Electric Telegraph: a Social and Economic History (Newton Abbot, 1973).

³⁰ Edwin Clark, ‘The Electric Telegraph Company’, The Times, 8 Sep 1852.

³¹ E. Clark to G. Airy, 2 Mar 1853, RGO MSS 6/612/33.

³² ‘Memoranda of Experiments made 15 Oct 1853 at Lothbury’, SC MSS 022/I/28–31, Institution of Engineering and Technology Archives.

³³ L. Clark to G. Airy, 13 Oct 1853, RGO MSS 6/468/173.

³⁴ Bruce Hunt, ‘Michael Faraday, Cable Telegraphy and the Rise of Field Theory’, History of Technology, 13 (1991), 1–19.

³⁵ L. Clark to G. Airy, 31 Oct 1853, RGO MSS 6/612/46.

³⁶ ‘Memoranda of Experiments’ (note 32), SC MSS 022/I/37–8.

³⁷ For Airy's introduction of a new mode of astronomical observations and division of labour to handle the problem of the personal equation at Greenwich, see Simon Schaffer, ‘Astronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal Equation’, Science in context, 2 (1988), 115–45; Robert Smith, ‘A National Observatory Transformed: Greenwich in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 22 (1991), 5–20.

³⁸ George Airy, ‘On the Difference of Longitude between the Observatories of Brussels and Greenwich, as determined by Galvanic Signals’, Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, 24 (1856), 1–27.

³⁹ J. Hartnup to G. Airy, 20 Dec 1853, RGO MSS 6/612/51–2.

⁴⁰ John Hartnup, ‘The Time-Ball in Castle Street’, The Liverpool Mercury, 23 Dec 1853.

⁴¹ L. Clark to G. Airy, Jan 16 1854, RGO MSS 6/612/61–2.

⁴² G. Airy to L. Clark, 2 Nov 1853, RGO MSS 6/612/47.

⁴³ L. Clark to G. Airy, 3 and 9 Nov 1853, G. Airy to L. Clark, 9 Nov 1853, RGO MSS 6/612/48–50: for the entry of 12 November 1853 in the Astronomer Royal's Journal, Airy wrote that ‘I went to Electric Telegraph Office to see the Ball Apparatus’. RGO MSS 6/25/93.

⁴⁴ G. Airy to L. Clark, 29 May 1854, L. Clark to G. Airy, 30 May 1854, RGO MSS 6/612/70–1.

⁴⁵ William Ellis, ‘Lecture on the Greenwich System of Time Signals’, The Horological Journal, 7 (1865), 85–91, 92–102, 109–14, 121–4, passim.

⁴⁶ J. Hartnup to G. Airy, 23 Mar 1858, RGO MSS 6/613/209.

⁴⁷ J. Hartnup to G. Airy, 12 Aug 1859, RGO MSS 6/614/54.

⁴⁸ G. Airy to L. Clark, 15 Aug 1859, RGO MSS 6/614/58.

⁴⁹ C. Varley to the Liverpool Office of the ETC, 31 Aug 1858, RGO MSS 6/614/68.

⁵⁰ L. Clark to G. Airy, 5 Sep 1859, RGO MSS 6/614/60.

⁵¹ G. Airy to J. Hartnup, 7 Sep 1859, RGO MSS 6/614/69–71.

⁵² G. Airy to J. Hartnup, 27 Sep 1852, RGO MSS 6/612/26–30.

⁵³ J. Hartnup to G. Airy, 30 Dec 1853, RGO MSS 6/612/57–8.

⁵⁴ Edward Bright to the Liverpool Observatory Committee, 13 Sep 1853, OBS MIN 252–3.

⁵⁵ A. F. Anderson, ‘William Henley, Pioneer Electrical Instrument Maker and Cable Manufacturer, 1813 to 1882’, IEE Proceedings A, 132 (1985), 249–61.

⁵⁶ John Hartnup, Report on the Liverpool Observatory (Liverpool, 1855), 5.

⁵⁷ Stuart Mountfield, Western Gateway: a History of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (Liverpool, 1965), chapter 1; Adrian Jarvis, ‘Maintaining the Trust: the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, 1858-1972’, The Mariner's Mirror, 94 (2008), 432–45.

⁵⁸ Aked (note 9), passim.

⁵⁹ Denys Vaughan, ‘Charles Shepherd's Electric Clocks’, Antiquarian Horology, 21 (1994), 519–30.

⁶⁰ Ellis (note 45); Edward Bright, The Electric Telegraph, 3rd edition (London, 1867), 195–8; Jones developed his form of pendulums based on the design that Bain had devised.

⁶¹ G. Airy, ‘Remarks on the Methods which May be Used for Producing Sympathy in the Movements of Distant Clocks as Depending upon One Central Clock’, RGO MSS 6/630/574–7.

⁶² Thomas Baines proudly claimed: ‘There is not a single large turret clock in London, whatever expense may have been gone to in its construction, the performance of which will bear the slightest comparison, in point of accuracy, with the performance of the old turret clock, on the top of the Liverpool Town Hall, since it has been under the control of the clock at the Observatory.’ Baines (note 12), part. 2, 55.

⁶³ Minutes books of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, Marine Committee, 6 Aug and 3 Sep 1861, MDHB/MP/13/2/5, 13, Merseyside Maritime Museum.

⁶⁴ J. Hartnup to J. P. Nichol, 27 Apr 1859, quoted in Glasgow Herald, 4 May 1859.

⁶⁵ MDHB minutes books, 1 Feb 1859, MDHB/MP/13/1/159.

⁶⁶ R. L. Jones, ‘On Electric Clocks, Being a Portion of a Paper Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Chester’, RGO MSS 6/627/299–300.

⁶⁷ John Hartnup, ‘On Controlling the Movements of Ordinary Clocks by Galvanic Currents’, The Horological Journal, 6 (1859), 77–8.

⁶⁸ ‘Inventions Shown by the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Co.’, Records of the British and Irish Magnetic Company, TGF 1/4, BT Archives.

⁶⁹ Bright (note 60).

⁷⁰ L. Clark to G. Airy, 6 Mar 1855, RGO MSS 6/627/296.

⁷¹ G. Airy to R. L. Jones, 8 Mar 1855, RGO MSS 6/627/302–3.

⁷² ‘Instruction to William Ellis’, 23 March 1859, RGO MSS 6/629/390.

⁷³ ‘Report by William Ellis on Jones’ System of Clocks', RGO MSS 6/629/397–410.

⁷⁴ Ellis (note 45), 123.

⁷⁵ E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-discipline, and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present, 38 (1967), 56–97; when consulted about visual time signals in Birmingham in 1863, Airy expressed his view that Jones's method was useful for the effective management of labour. He stated: ‘The value in money, to society, of such a signal, is far greater than would at first thought be imagined…The punctuality which these time signals produce leaves much workmen's time at the disposal of the firm.’ G. Airy to Mark Stephenson, 16 Sep 1863, RGO MSS 6/615/9–10.

⁷⁶ George Airy, Report of the Astronomer Royal to the Board of Visitors (London, 1866), 12; idem, Description of the Great Equatoreal at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (London, 1869).

⁷⁷ William Ellis, ‘The Greenwich Time Signal System’, Nature, 14 (1876), 50–2, 110–3.

⁷⁸ Ellis (note 45), 90–1.

⁷⁹ George Airy, Report of the Astronomer Royal to the Board of Visitors (London, 1860), 6.

⁸⁰ G. Airy to E. Bright, 2 Jun 1859, E. Bright to G. Airy, 8 Aug 1859, RGO MSS 6/629/436–9, 442; G. Airy to M. Faraday, 16, 19, and 23 Aug 1859, M. Faraday to G. Airy, 18 and 20 Aug 1859, in The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, vol. 5, edited by Frank A. J. L. James (London, 2008), 545–6, 548–9, 551.

⁸¹ Charles Walker, ‘On Controlling Clocks by Electricity’, Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, 21 (1861), 72–6.

⁸² Frederick Ritchie, ‘Controlling and Correcting Clocks by Electricity’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 26 (1878), 608–20 (609).

⁸³ Frederick Ritchie, ‘Description of the Clock-Trigger for the Time-Gun Signal in Edinburgh Castle’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 5 (1865), 152–9.

⁸⁴ Charles Piazzi Smyth, ‘On the Methods Adopted to Secure Extreme Accuracy in the Edinburgh Castle Time-Gun Signal’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 6 (1865), 136–52, (137).

⁸⁵ C. P. Smyth to G. Airy, 11 Jan 1878, RGO MSS 6/618/104; Frederick Ritchie, ‘Electro-Sympathetic Clocks and Time-Signals’, The Horological Journal, 17 and 18 (1875), 185–8, 4–11; for Ritchie's clocks established in Dublin, see Patrick Wayman, Dunsink Observatory, 1785–1985 (Dublin, 1987), 135.

⁸⁶ Ian Bartky, Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America (Stanford, 2000), 77.

⁸⁷ Letter from William Thomson, Glasgow Herald, 6 Feb 1865.

⁸⁸ Robert Grant, ‘Greenwich Mean Time in Glasgow’, The Horological Journal, 8 (1866), 55–7; idem, ‘Controlling of Clocks by Electricity from the Observatory of Glasgow University’, Glasgow Herald, 14 Oct 1864; idem, ‘Transmission of True Time from the Glasgow Observatory by Electricity’, Glasgow Herald, 17 Jan 1866.

⁸⁹ Glasgow Herald, 2 Feb 1866; William Thomson, ‘On Electrically Impelled and Electrically Controlled Clocks’, in Mathematical and Physical Papers, vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1911), 388–92.

⁹⁰ E. Bright to G. Airy, 6 May 1859, 20 Jun 1860, G. Airy to E. Bright, 7 and 26 May 1859, RGO MSS 6/614/249–55, 264.

⁹¹ Corporation of London, Court of Common Council, Journal, 16 Nov 1865, COL/CC/01/01/142, London Metropolitan Archives.

⁹² ‘Regulation of Clocks in the City of London’, memorandum written by William Ellis, 13 Dec 1865, RGO MSS 6/615/504–6.

⁹³ Corporation of London, Committee Papers, General Purpose Committee, 13 Dec 1865, COL/CC/GPC/02/39, London Metropolitan Archives.

⁹⁴ ‘Uniformity of Time’, The Times, 6 Mar 1874.

⁹⁵ C. Chambers to G. Airy, 7 Jun 1866, RGO MSS 6/616/514–5.

⁹⁶ G. Airy to C. Chambers, 15 Aug 1866, RGO MSS 6/616/537–8.

⁹⁷ G. Airy to W. N. Shepherd, R. L. Jones, E. J. Dent, 14 Dec 1866; E. J. Dent to G. Airy, W. N. Shepherd to G. Airy, 17 Dec 1866, R. L. Jones to G. Airy, 31 Dec 1866, RGO MSS 6/616/549–55, 69–70.

⁹⁸ G. Airy to R. L. Jones, 29 Jan 1867, RGO MSS 6/616/581.