In Pursuit of Accurate Timekeeping : Liverpool and Victorian Electrical Horology
In Pursuit of Accurate Timekeeping : Liverpool and Victorian Electrical Horology
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追求精确计时：利物浦和维多利亚电子钟表学
DOI：
10.1080/00033790.2013.878036
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发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
0.3
通讯作者：
Yuto Ishibashi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Yuto Ishibashi
本文探讨了19世纪的利物浦如何成为一个先进的城市方面的公共计时，以及更广泛的影响，这对时间的标准化。从19世纪40年代中期开始，这座港口城市的当地科学家和市政机构致力于改善向船只和公众传达准确时间的方式。因此，利物浦是第一个见证同步时钟系统形成的英国城市，该系统基于罗伯特·琼斯的发明。他的方法在科学和工程界获得了相当大的声誉，这导致了随后在格林威治和爱丁堡等许多天文台的复制。作为时间信号技术发展的另一个重要例子，本文还重点介绍了由英国电报公司与皇家乔治比德尔艾里合作在利物浦建立的时间球。这是一个特别重要的发展，因为正如本文所述，测量格林威治时间信号准确性的最重要技术之一是在时间球的实验操作中形成的。从利物浦的背景中出现的发明和知识对维多利亚时代英国公共计时的转变至关重要。
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.