The Woods Hole Time Ball

19 The Woods Hole Time Ball Townsend Hornor Na utical oddities like time balls have always fasci The earl y nav igators used estimates ot time to calcu nated me. There used ro be a time ball in New York late longi tude, occasionally confirmed by local solar on the Ti tani c Memorial Light and Time Ball Tower and lunar eclipses whose exact time could be pre of the Seaman's Church Institute, which is now lo dicted worldwide. But eclipses were not conveniently cated at the entrance ro the So uth Street Seaport frequent, and these nav igators usually had no real Museum. ['ve also seen time balls at the National idea of their longitude. In the I 770s, W illi am Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. and at Harri son constructed the first ships' chronometers. Mys tic Seaport. But I became especially intrigued Sli ghtly later, Pierre LeRoy and Thomas Earnshaw with these devices when I lea rn ed that one once sat came up with similar devices at more reasonable arop the water rower of the u .S. Fi sh Commission cost. I Building in Woods Hole many yea rs ago. These timepieces, JUSt like yo ur watch, kept fa irly When we think of time balls, most of us picture New good, but not perfect, tim e. They had to be com York's Times Square and the apple-shaped object pared regul arly with a time standard to determine dropping fro m the rop of a long pole signifYi ng, at their rate of error. This was the mariner's problem: the very end of its fall, the Start of a new year. It where could one find a sou.rce of correCt drn e aboard turns out that this is not an ordinary time ball be ship' [n the I 820s, va rious visual means - fl ags, gun ca use most cime balls indicate the exact time th e smoke, searchlights, rockets - were tri ed in di fferent moment at which the ball is rel eased from the rop of ports to delineate some preselected moment in rirne, its pole. but it was nOt untillare in 1829 thar an ex perim en tal time ball , hoisted to th e top of a mast and dropped We need to go back a little to understand what all at a precise rime, was tried ar Portsmouth, Englan d, this time ball business is about. Geographical loca and found satisfa ctory. Time balls we re subsequently tions on land and sea have bee n defined since the installed in Liverpool and Greenwich, England; time of Ptolemy in terms of lati tude and longitude. Mauritius; St. Helena; Cape of Good Hope; Jakarta; Latitude is found by measuring the sun's altitude at Val paraiso; Madras; and Bombay among others, gen noon or by measuring the height of the Pole Star erally between 1833 and 1845. above the horizon. The Portuguese nav igarors un der the leadership of Prince Henry "the Navigator" The firSt Ameri can time ball , at the U.S. Naval Ob (1394-1 460) developed practical methods and in servarory in Washingron. DC, was nor installed un struments to accomplish this at sea. But longicude is til 1845, although our govern ment had known abour harder. T he hard part is determining the time at a time bal ls since as early as 1830. The Washington known longitude by means of an accurate clock. The time ball was used onl y to coordinate time for the difference in times determines the difference in lon various government departments and the locals. Af gitude between the known point and the place where ter rhi s rnodest beginning, time balls were erected in the ship's observat ion was made. New York (1877), Boston (1879), and then at an 20 impressive li st of portS including, top at II :58 a.m., dropped at 12 on the East Coast: Newport, Phila h, 0 m, 0 s noon. If there was a delphia, Baltimore, H ampton drop failure, the ball was nex t Roads, Newport News, Norfolk, dropped at 12:05 p.m., etc. There Savannah, Key West, and Woods were lists of failure repons rang Hole. in g from bancry fai lu res, rarchcr wheel mi x- ups, halyard failures, T he Woods Hole time ball was icing, and a broken key so that the placed on the water tower of the ball's cover could not be unlocked . U.S. Fish Commission building lo ca ted where the NOAA National It is interesting to notc th at in En Marine Fisheries Service is now on gland rhe balls we re dropped at I Water Street. It was used from 1885 p.m. because the persons in charge to 1902/3. The time ball was we re generally so busy at noon cal round, 3.5 fec t in diameter, and cul at ing the exact rime [hat rhey raised on a mast whose [OP was 7S preferred to drop the ball at the feet above sea level. T he ball nex t hour. In this country they dropped 25 feet at noon, and was were almost always dropped at lowered a Iirtle later to rhe base of noon, with rhe time being trans the pole where it was kept until its mitted from the Naval Observa nex t use. toty to the local stations by West ern Union Telegraph. (The tel e The installation seems to have been graph had come in to commercial typical for time balls. The shape was use in 1846.) Initially, noon mea nt usually a segmented metal frame local apparent noon, whi ch varied wo rk covered with black canvas, with rhe locarion's longitude: up we ighing perhaps 120 pounds. The ~ " ' to 3.5 hours from coast to coast. ball was hoisted on a rope halyard, j. Each major city had its own local then dropped manually or, in later 1rft: . " time. When the rai lroads came, me . , years, automaticall y by an electro .:"~ . - . need for a common rim e standard ~ t magnecic release activated by a tele became much more obvious. In graphed impulse. Time ball s cost .,;; Pittsburgh, for exa mple, there we re between $400 and $ 1, I 00 plus in six d iffe rent time standards for stall ation and mai ntenance. There l. crain arrivals and departures . A was an elaborate protocol fo r their rraveler from Maine to CaJifornia I' would change his watch some usc, wi th a preliminary signal, an "arming" seep, the dme signal itself, twenty times along the way. So in an error signal in case offuilure, and Diagram of all (':l rl y lime ball inSI:lllatiOIl from 1883, after years of debate, a stan so fonh. In Boston, the ball was to IIbmrfllt'd LOIlr/oll AlmfUlflrk for /845. page 28. dard time scheme was adopted be at half-mas t at II :55 a.m., at the Courresy l owllscnd Hornor. with me zones as they exist today. 21 U.S. Fish Com mission Imildings in Woods Hole, 1890. Fisheries bbornlory on the lefr . administr.uion and res idence building with irs adjacent nag pole on th c ri ght. The lime ball is on 101' of IIle shingled w:ucr tOwer in [he middle. Photo by Baldwin Coolidge. No. 5 147. Courtesy WHHC. Standard time could now be distributed to time balls It seems most likely that the work of the Fisheri es via (h e telegraph . a small adjustment being made in Commission required high ly accurate calculations each loca ti on for the different tran smission cim es of positio ns at sea and that. together with its Federal along [he wi reo Government connection , justified the Woods Hole tim e ball. What accounts for irs ea rl y termin at ion in Why did such a small parr as Woods Hole warrant a 1902/3 is mo re of a mystery. Most of the other time rim e balt purring it in [h e sam e ca tego ry as 805[011, balls exi sted until the 19205. In 1904 the Naval Newport, a. nd New York ? There were many more Observaro ry began rransmirr ing rim e sig naJs dai ly vessel s using Vineyard Haven. New Bedford . and at noon. The avai labili ry of radio time signals to Hya nnis. Why nor place it in o ne of (hose ports in nav igators. whi ch greatly accelerated during Wo rl d stead? Wa r I. spell ed the end of the need for time ba ll s. 22 Once a mari ner co uld receive ti me by rad io. the need estingsrory, I as ked around Woods Hole and lea rned for visual checks in porr became unnecessary. Bur absolurely no rh ing. No one had ever heard of a none of thar ex plains the early demise of our Woods Woods Hole rime ball! So I rurned ro the Inrerner. Hole bal l. Perhaps a srorm rook ir down or maybe Afrer prowling around I found rhe U.S. Naval O b the wa ter tower was demolished. Does anyone know? servatory sire. To my amaze ment I discovered th ar It seems strange that so pro minent a landmark coul d they had a time ball page. disappear in to such obscuri ty. I then srruck up an email co rres po ndence with D r. In Nove mber 1980, rhe Vineyard Gazerre publ ished Sreven J. Dick of the O bservarory, ro who m I am a bri ef lerrer from Ian Bartky of the Narional Bu deeply indebred.

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