... It sends galvanic signals every day along all the
principal railways diverging from London. It drops the Greenwich Ball,
and the Ball on the Offices of the Electric Telegraph Company in the
Strand;... All these various effects are produced without sensible
error of time; and I cannot but feel a satisfaction in thinking that
the Royal Observatory is thus quietly contributing to the punctuality
of business through a large portion of this busy country. I have the
satisfaction of stating to the Visitors that the Lords Commissioners
of the Admiralty have decided on the erection of a Time-Signal Ball at
Deal, for the use of the shipping in the Downs, to be dropped every
day by a galvanic current from the Royal Observatory. The construction
of the apparatus is entrusted to me. Probably there is no roadstead in
the world in which the knowledge of true time is so important.'--The
Report includes an account of the determination of the Longitude of
Cambridge Observatory by means of galvanic signals, which appear to
have been perfectly successful.--Under the head of General Remarks the
following passage appears: 'The system of combining the labour of
unattached computers with that of attached Assistants tends materially
to strengthen our powers in everything relating to computation.
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