The First North American Time Ball

Bartky Ian R. and Dick Steven J. , “The first time balls”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xii (1981), 155–64.

For the details see Dick Steven J. , “How the U.S. Naval Observatory began, 1830–65”, Sky and telescope, lx (1980), 466–71.

Gilliss James M. , “A report of the plan and construction of the depot of charts and instruments, with a description of the instruments, &c”, 28th Congress, 2nd session, Senate Report 114, 18 February 1845, 77 pp. Gilliss does not describe or illustrate a time ball in this first description of the Observatory.

Maury Matthew F. , Washington astronomical and meteorological observations for 1845 (Washington, 1846), title page. This series is clearly based upon the format of The Greenwich observations, particularly the volumes for 1836 and later, when Airy George B. , seventh Astronomer Royal, superintended their preparation.

“For the purpose of giving correct time to the city, a staff has been placed on top of the dome, and a large, but light, ball is hoisted ten minutes before 12 o'clock of each day, except Sunday. The pulley is connected with an electro-magnetic battery after the ball is up, and the circuit is broken by the assistant in the chronometer room at the instant of noon” ( Gilliss James M. , Astronomical and meteorological observations made at the United States Naval Observatory during the year 1861 (Washington, 1862), p. x). Gilliss, Maury's successor, summarizes the various duties in the same manner as Airy did when he succeeded the sixth Astronomer Royal, John Pond.

These sources include writings of three important, late nineteenth-century American scientists who served as Naval Observatory astronomers in their youths. Cleveland Abbe included in his influential paper on Standard Time a table entry: “1855, WASHINGTON.—U.S. Naval Observatory began dropping noon-time-ball” ( Abbe Cleveland Chairman , “Report of Committee on Standard Time; May, 1879”, Proceedings of the American Metrological Society, ii (1880), 17–44). Later Abbe wrote, “About 1850 a time ball was established on the U.S. Naval Observatory at Washington …” (anon., “Standard time in America”, Science, n.s., xxii (1905), 315–18; this article is listed as no. 233 in Cleveland Abbe's bibliography in the Biographical memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences , viii (Washington, 1919), 505). H. S. Pritchett wrote, “The first time ball established in the United States was dropped from the dome of the Naval Observatory in Washington in 1855”, a statement repeated essentially verbatim by Holden E. S. ( Pritchett H. S. , “The Kansas City electric time ball”, Kansas City review of science and industry, iv (1881), 720–23; Holden Edward S. , “Astronomy”, Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution … for the year 1881 (Washington, 1883), 228). Airy George B. alludes to the Washington time ball in his 1861 list of sixteen time balls in operation around the world, a list reproduced as an appendix in Howse Derek , Greenwich time and the discovery of the longitude (Oxford, 1980), 227–8. The Nautical magazine, a British journal-of-record for navigation, carried no notice of the Observatory's time signal; and an equivalent American journal stated only, “As is generally known, a large black ball descends the flagstaff of the dome …” (Editors, “The National Observatory”, U.S. nautical magazine and naval journal , vi (New York, 1857), 443). Another possible source of this era is Henry Raper, The practice of navigation and nautical astronomy (London), Table 10; however, all editions from the third (1849) to at least the fifteenth (1883) list only the same nine time balls, and the Washington time ball is not one of the nine.

“John Q. Adams, who was a devoted friend of the Observatory, and who used to visit it frequently in the last days of his life [died 23 February 1848], has been known to walk all the way up to the Observatory from his lodgings, to see the ball fall” (Bohn's hand-book of Washington (Washington, 1852), 51–52; this reference forms part of the Toner collection in the Rare Book Division of The Library of Congress).

U.S. National Archives, Record Group 78, Records of the Naval Observatory, Letters Received, 1838–84, Box 2: Letter of John Y. Mason to M. Maury.

U.S. National Archives, Record Group 78, Records of the Naval Observatory, Letters Sent, July 1842–November 1862, vol. i, p. 317.

Ibid., p. 336.

U.S. National Archives, loc. cit. (ref. 8): Letter of J. Coffin to M. Maury.

U.S. National Archives, loc. cit. (ref. 9), p. 396.

The date of President Adams's first visit to the National Observatory, as given in Adams Charles F. (ed.), Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his diary from 1795 to 1848, xii (Philadelphia, 1877), 189. Although he describes the Observatory's building and equipment in some detail, Adams does not mention a time ball. We note here that Adams had received a letter in 1839 from Airy G. B. , in which the Greenwich time ball was included as part of the Royal Observatory's description (Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, i (Cambridge, Mass., 1856), p. ciii).

The latest date printed in Maury , Washington astronomical and meteorological observations for 1845.

There was a South American (Valparaiso, Chile) time ball by 1843 (The nautical magazine, xii (1843), 768). The first Canadian time ball was erected in 1855 at the Citadel in Quebec ( Thomson Malcolm M. , The beginning of the long dash (Toronto, 1978), 18). There were over two dozen US and Canadian time balls by the first decade of the twentieth century.

Between 1832 and 1845 The nautical magazine describes eleven time-ball sites.

“At 12m. a ball is dropped from a flagstaff,… which enables navigators leaving the Potomac to regulate their time to a second, and also regulates the city time” ( Hunter A. , The Washington and Georgetown directory, strangers' guide-book for Washington, and Congressional and clerks' register (Washington, 1853), p. 66 of “Strangers' guide-book” section). Two American navigational time balls were erected as commercial ventures on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco in 1852 ( Myrick David F. , San Francisco's Telegraph Hill (Berkeley, 1972), 31–32). A reproduction of a newspaper advertisement for the first time ball is on p. 31; a picture of the London-made clock which regulated the second time ball is on p. 5 of Stephens Barclay W. , “Time balls”, Bulletin of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, x (Philadelphia, 1961), 3–10.

Bartky and Dick , op. cit. (ref. 1).

A contrast to Airy, who mentions “the dropping of the Signal Ball at 1^h mean time every day” in his description of observatory duties ( Airy G. B. , Astronomical observations made at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the year 1836 (London, 1837), p. ii). He also refers to “the Signal Ball” on p. i of the 1840 volume (published 1842). We believe that Maury saw these citations, since he uses the term “signal ball” in his Goodyear letter (ref. 10 above), while The nautical magazine citations are invariably to “time-ball”.

That Maury did not report the time ball's installation to the Secretary of the Navy can be explained by the fact that Mason John Y. had two tours of duty as Navy Secretary: 26 March 1844–10 March 1845, and 10 September 1846–7 March 1849. Since the Washington time ball became operative after Mason's first tour, one need not inform his successor of the event; since the time ball was operative by the start of Mason's second tour of duty, there was no need to inform him.

Loomis Elias , The recent progress of astronomy; especially in the United States (New York, 3rd edition enlarged, 1856), 289. P. 224 of this book has a drawing of the National Observatory with a time ball larger than the official engraving, but “of smaller size than … [the five-foot diameter one] at Greenwich”, a representation also consistent with Maury's order to Goodyear. The illustration appears again in Loomis, “Astronomical observatories in the United States”, Harper's new monthly magazine, xiii (New York, June 1856), 25–52.

Pritchett , op. cit. (ref. 6) 720.

Bache A. D. and Gould B. A. , letter in The New York Times, 14 February 1856, p. 8, col. 2.

Dick , op. cit. (ref. 2), 469, describes still another time ball, “a black canvas structure, 2 ½ feet wide”. This is apparently a later device that surrounded the staff on which it slid.

“The ball, instead of having a hole in the center fitting over the pole, slid down the side of the pole. This is the only instance found of this form of ball” ( Stephens , op. cit. (ref. 17), 7). “This ball did not slide on the mast [like the Greenwich one] but along side it as shown in the accompaning [sic] [missing] picture” ( Watts Ada W. , “Time balls”, unpublished manuscript, US Naval Observatory Library (1963), 6pp).

For the Portsmouth time ball, see Bartky and Dick , op. cit. (ref. 1); for the Greenwich time ball, see Howse , op. cit. (ref. 6), 79–80.

“I have just received a suggestion from … San Francisco that a large fixed shape be placed at the top of the mast, so that the signal may be more quickly observed by the separation of the ball and this shape. It is intended to embody this in the specifications” (Norfolk, Virginia Branch Hydrographic Office, 19 March 1913; in US National Archives, Record Group 37, Entry 41, 187–75893). The various US Navy time balls installed in San Francisco, including the 1908 one being discussed in this passage, are pictured in Bartky , “Naval Observatory time dissemination before the wireless” (US Naval Observatory Sesquicentennial Special Publication (1982), 27pp. (in press)).

Report of the Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory for the year ending June 30, 1885 (Washington, 1885), 7.

Executive Office Building, General Services Administration Historical Study no. 3 (Washington, 1970), 75.