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Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Time Ball

The top pic is as seen from the Thames River. Back in the day, ships set their clocks by it. The ball would lower at exactly 1300 each day, and was managed by the royal observatory. Accurate clocks were the best way to determine longitude, important if you wanted to go somewhere in the world. The only thing that changed this was satellite timing, and GPS--a modern invention.

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