KEEPING TIME

I remember a proverb that says opportunity knocks only once. That may be true, but it is also true that having heard the knock you still have to open the door. And, when the scientists at the Royal \Observatory at Greenwich, England heard that knock in 1835 they were mightily annoyed. So they pawned off the job of dealing with the disturbance to one of their servants. He turned that disturbance into a career. In fact he made three life long careers out of simply telling the time.  

The Royal Observatory was founded by Charles II  (above) in 1765 as part of his restoration and “re-scientific-ication” of government after the religious fanaticism of that great Puritan villain Oliver Cromwell. The observatory was to use the stars to perfect “the art of navigation.” 

But the builders, despite going over budget by all of twenty pounds, went cheap on the materials, and the observatory, which was to house the most accurate telescopes of the day, was constructed 13 degrees out of alignment. The Royal astronomers, like the NASA astronomers dealing with the deformed mirrors on the orbiting Hubble telescope, have had to make mathematical adjustments from that day to this.

But besides powerful telescopes, the scientist at the Greenwich observatory also needed accurate clocks. In order to say a particular star was at a particular point in the sky at midnight, they had to know precisely when midnight was. So in the special built Octagon Room were installed two pendulum clocks, (above, center) built by Thomas Tompion, each accurate to within seven seconds a day.

By 1833 (sixty-four years later) the observatory had done its job so well that ships’ captains and navigators had come to rely on the precise time provided by Greenwich to follow the charts provided by Greenwich. That year the observatory began a practice they follow to this day. 

At exactly 12.55 p.m., (they do it then so as not to interfere with the weather observations made at noon) a large red “time ball” is raised half way to the top of a mast erected atop the observatory.

 At 12.58 the time ball is pulled all the way to the top (above). And then at 1:00 P.M., exactly, the ball is released and quickly falls to the bottom of the mast. If you have ever wondered why they use a ball to mark midnight on New Years Eve in Times Square, New York City, this is it. 

Any ship’s captain waiting in the Thames River to set sail could now synchronize their shipboard watches and clocks with the official time as they set off from the “prime meridian”....

....or “longitude naught” - "0" degrees, "0" seconds and "0" minutes east/west, because Greenwich is where the longitude starts (above, gold line) - and time.  

But our story properly begins in 1835, when the observatory got a new boss, George Biddle Airy (above). He figured his primary job was to perfect the astronomical observations for those ships of the British Empire, and he hired human “computers” to do just that.

Now, in the 19th century "computers" were actually men and women who did the dull and boring math required to confirm and correct the stellar charts used to navigate on voyages to the far flung corners of the empire. So, in 1835, when London merchants appealed to Mr. Airy to share in the time service he saw them as an annoyance. But it was not one he could ignore.

He gave the job to his second assistant, John Henry Belville, who had worked at Greenwich as a "Jack-of-all-trades" since 1811, when Belville was just 13 years old.  John Henry dropped his Christian  French name after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 to avoid anti-French bigotry. Over the years he became responsible for maintaining   “Galvano-Magnetic” clock at Shephard's Gate,  (above,) until 1856, when it was replaced with an electric one, and for raising and lowering the red time ball every day. And to preform his new job of dealing with the merchants, Airy provided John Henry with one of the new very accurate and dependable pocket watches.  

This particular watch  (above) had been originally owned by Prince Augustus Frederick, the Duke of Sussex and the sixth son of King George III of England. He was the favorite uncle of Queen Victoria and the man who gave her away at her 1840 wedding to Prince Albert.

The watch, number 485/786,  had been assembled by John Arnold & Sons in 1794. It had a spring detent escapement workings, a jeweled movement with a diamond end stone, all enclosed in a silver case (above), with a white enamel dial with gold spade hands and a subsidiary seconds dial.  The mechanics were accurate to within one tenth of second per day.

Each Monday John Henry would present himself and “Faithful Arnold”, the watch, to a clerk at the observatory time desk. The clerk would set the watch and then hand John  a certificate asserting to the watch’s accuracy for that day. 

Then John Henry would make his way by carriage and rail to London, where he would literally deliver the time to some two hundred customers; shops, factories and offices. The fees he charged for the service supplemented his small salary from the observatory.  For most of the people in London, John Henry was the face of official time, and he was earning four hundred pounds a year doing it when he died in 1856.  

After John’s death  the prigs at the government accounting office refused his widow, Maria, a pension. So she begged the observatory to allow her to continue the time service as a private business, and they agreed. Every Monday Marie strode up the observatory hill, watched while Arnold was synchronized at the "Time Desk (above)" and then went on her rounds by rail and on foot. 

To those who saw her trudging across the streets of London, Maria Bellville became known as the Greenwich Time Lady. 

By 1884 some 25 countries had agreed to set their watches by Greenwich time, and every clock at every railroad station in England was connected directly via telegraph lines with the Royal Observatory. And still, the time delivered by Marie Belville was just as accurate, if slightly less convenient. Maria retired in 1892 (above), and her only daughter Ruth now took over the employment,  carrying the tool of her trade, which she simply called Arnold, in her handbag.

Beginning in 1924 the BBC Radio began broadcasting from the observatory and added the six “pips” on air before each hour announcement. In 1936 the Royal Observatory set up a “talking clock” (above) which anyone with a telephone could dial up at any time to get the correct time to within a hundredth of a second. In most of the rest of the world this technology replaced the quaint "time keepers" of the past. But the English have more respect for keeping what works, particularly if it is a living person. 

A hundred years after her family business had begun,  Ruth Belville (above) was still making her rounds every Monday; having Arnold set by the Royal Greenwich Observatory staff, getting a paper validation of the event, and then serving more than fifty paying customers. 

Finally, in 1940, Ruth celebrated her 86th birthday and decided to retire.  And, since she had no one to pass the task on to, when Ruth retired the Belville family work was finally completed.

Ruth received a pension from  “The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers” guild , where "Faithful Arnold" was also granted a place of rest and honor.  Then on the evening of Tuesday, 7 December, 1943, Ruth left a gas lamp burning in the bedroom of her home in Beddington, Surrey. Sometime during the night the flame sputtered and went out and Ruth suffocated in her sleep, at the age of 89.

In effect, she ran out of time.

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