Your daily fact-of-delight
Jan. 26th, 2009 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt was the coming of the railways that dragged Greenwich Mean Time all across the UK; I knew this. (People kept missing trains, because they were judging by local time while the train-drivers ran on London time, and they could easily be a crucial ten minutes apart.)
Conservative curmudgeons in various cities resisted the imposition of "railway time" for as long as they could; I knew that too.
For a while, the clock on Tom Tower had two minute hands, five minutes apart: one set to Oxford time and one to railway time. How could I not have known this? Oxford is my home town; I grew up hearing the hundred-and-one strokes just after nine every night. I won't say they lulled me to sleep, 'cos I was a bad sleeper already and, y'know, bells. Not necessarily conducive. But. I am astonished. And now better informed. I shall add it to my catalogue of Oxford anecdotes instanter, and sound like I have known it all my life.
Also, I am thinking story. A clock that tells two different times at once? That is so science-fictional... (Did you know the word "scientist" was not coined till 1840?)
[It has wisely been said, "Chaz hates research, but loves finding stuff out."]
Conservative curmudgeons in various cities resisted the imposition of "railway time" for as long as they could; I knew that too.
For a while, the clock on Tom Tower had two minute hands, five minutes apart: one set to Oxford time and one to railway time. How could I not have known this? Oxford is my home town; I grew up hearing the hundred-and-one strokes just after nine every night. I won't say they lulled me to sleep, 'cos I was a bad sleeper already and, y'know, bells. Not necessarily conducive. But. I am astonished. And now better informed. I shall add it to my catalogue of Oxford anecdotes instanter, and sound like I have known it all my life.
Also, I am thinking story. A clock that tells two different times at once? That is so science-fictional... (Did you know the word "scientist" was not coined till 1840?)
[It has wisely been said, "Chaz hates research, but loves finding stuff out."]