TOWN CLOCKS
"Big Ben" in London is, I suppose, the best example of what a town clock ought to be: big...high..loud , visible from all four sides and well known and respected as the place to get the correct time - day or night.
A good Town Clock is the center of community life. It signals the start of each new day, sets the time for events throughout the day and closes it for some while opening it for other with different hours of work. It's vibrant summons is one of unity, drawing people closer together. Notice how often people refer to it as “our Town Clock “.
If you live in an older community you probably have a version of a “Town Clock”: somewhere in sight. They are, however coming to be quite scarce. They are really no longer needed in the ways they once were. Older ones are not being replaced.
In our time we all wear wrist watches and we have the “time” available from other sources as well: posted in shop windows,,sign along the highways, one the street as well – banks. In particular like to show he correct time as if saying “Time is Money”. We see the time shown on our TV screens, and down in the lower right-hand corner of every computer monitor. Time is all around us! We no longer sit patiently and wait for the Town Clock to sound the hour so we can get along with our business on schedule. Whatever we might do, wherever we may go, time is at hand, every minute of every day and night.
Unfortunately, all clocks are different in subtle ways. They are not always on time, to so to speak. Some are early - running too rapidly; others are slow -not running fast enough. Many clocks of the larger types responded well to penny weights added to their pendulums or to their being removed. It is good that we cannot see all four faces of tower clocks at the same time, because they disagree at times.
When I was a kid, we lived in a railroad town so we had two time systems - "Real" or Standard time and Railroad or N&W time. The jewelry stores downtown had two clocks in their front display windows - one set to show regular time and the other to tell RR time. As I recall, there was about twenty-six minutes difference between the time the sun rose over the Atlantic Ocean at Norfolk,Va the eastern terminus of the railroad line and the time it came up at Radford some three hundred miles away in Southwest Virginia. We paid little attention to RR time and use Standard in everything except in referring to train arrival and departure times and railroad business but it was cumbersome and on its way out even then in the 1920's.
I think we ordinarily blame Daylight Savings Time on Benjamin Franklin. The idea that he did so seems to be a valid one in that it agrees with Poor Richard's idea about economy. For Ben to tinker with Time, in his gadget-ty way would, probably be an accurate accusation. Franklin would have been interested in arranging the hours so the earl, sunlit morning hours might be productive and darkening hours of evening might lead to sleep.
DST came in handy during World Wars I and II and worked well enough with most people to be made a part of our summertime routine. I say "most of us". Some areas still on using "Regular","Real"”,"The Lord's" or "Sun" time, year-round. The main hold-outs are the State of Arizona, and the northeastern counties of the State of Indiana and there are other pockets of resistance, as well. There are some business firms and summer resorts which adamantly adhere to..."real" time which results in six months of confusion each summer.
A.L.M. April 5,2003 [ c655wds]
