Great video. Interesting show. Good info there Mike!!
David Hill said:Good point. I want to know more! How did that really work?
Great video. Interesting show. Good info there Mike!!
W.A.G. time, but based on what I leaned from the segment, and what I know of current time broadcast standards (WWV CHU etc.)…
The Regulator clock might have had a contact that closed once each second sending a short second blip from the jeweler’s shop by telegraph line to the RR time office. There would be a second contact at Noon that would send a longer tone down the wire. It’s likely that only the Noon signal (and perhaps midnight) was transmitted to all the stations so that they could manually sync their clock with the RR home office. The local depot clocks would probably only be off by a minute or two so they would know when to be listening for the time signal.
Way to go. Lets hope the head does not grow. Maybe if we are good Mike will still communicate with us. Later RJD
Very Cool Mike! Next time I’m at York, I’ll bring my confuser screen so you can sign it for me. You did a great job, can’t believe you were within 5 hours and didn’t stop by. Hope you got to go along to the Illinois Railroad Museum in Union, its a good one.
Just got back from S. Korea with my Father in law and a large number of other Korean war vets. Wonderful trip, the Korean people were extraordinarily gracious and friendly, genuinely thankful. I got to interview a lot of vets. Only train I saw, aside from the subway, was an old Japanese made Mikado with the power reverser on the fireman’s side–it looked to me like they reversed the engineer’s and fireman’s position.
It’s not entirely clear how those telegraphic transmission rigs worked–there are none left in existence that I know of. The existing patents and descriptions talk about electrical contacts on the gears or at the extreme of a pendulum swing, but corrosion was a problem and also the contacts tended to make the clocks less accurate, which mattered a lot for astronomical work. I conclude that it twas mostly PR and that more typically the astronomer would just manually click a noon signal. RRs never really required the level of precision that astronomers did.
David Russell said:Ummmmm ... noDel Tapparo said:Does that mean me as well?
I guess we will now have to start treating you with respect Mike. :)