On the line – July 2008

Transcript

Natasha: Hello. I'm Natasha Waterson. And once again, I'm joined by David Rooney, our curator of timekeeping.

David: Hello

Natasha: Last time, we caught up with William Willett and his controversial proposal for British Summer Time.

David: Yeah. He had this bright idea of changing the clocks every summer to make better use of summer daylight. And it was exactly 100 years ago that he was appearing before a Parliamentary Select Committee, fighting for government acceptance of his controversial scheme.

Natasha: So, what happened next?

David: Well, last month we heard from William Willett himself, and from the Astronomer Royal, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle crept into the story. But there was another man waiting in the wings, and he was about to try to hijack Willett's entire scheme. And his name was St. John Wynne.

Natasha: That's a really good name. What did he do?

David: St. John Wynne ran an electric time service. He sold his customers an hourly electric time signal from his master clock in Queen Victoria Street in the city of London, and that signal set all of his customers' clocks right every hour.

But the trouble was, it was a really nice idea, but the business was hemorrhaging cash. So Wynne had a plan: he would try to get William Willett's Summer Time scheme amended to say that if all the clocks in the country needed changing twice a year, it would be his company that automatically did the changing. And this was called synchronizing. In other words, he wanted to be the official synchronizer of the whole country.

Natasha: So it was a bit of a money-making scheme. How did he try and convince the politicians?

David: Well, he stood in front of this Parliamentary Select Committee, ostensibly about William Willett, and because he had quite a tactic up his sleeve, St. John Wynne - St. John Whinge, more like - he stood up and started off this extraordinary diatribe about the rest of the clock-making business.

He said this: 'From time to time, there have been public outcries against lying clocks. On every occasion, when an outcry is made, the clockmaker always says, "Synchronizing. Synchronizing is an insult to a good clock. It doesn't require it." But while he says that about synchronizing, he never suggests a remedy, and it goes on the same as before, year after year. It's always the cry of the British horologist. He's always against any progress. It's a humbug that altering clocks harms them. Instead of synchronizing being an insult to a good clock, it gives just a touch of perfection which it lacks.'

I mean, my goodness, that was quite a diatribe. But it didn't really have much of an effect, because, like William Willett's own proposals, this synchronizing business of Wynne's also went on year after year. And unfortunately, as Wynne was standing in front of this Select Committee, it was at the end of a long scheme of his to try to get his business on firmer footings. The only trouble was there was a fly in the ointment.

Natasha: And what was that?

David: Well, there was an irritating little rival who was already distributing Greenwich time around London, as well as his company, and her name was Ruth Belville. Now, Ruth used to carry around a pocket watch which was corrected every week at the Royal Observatory, at the master clock for Great Britain, and then she'd carry that pocket watch around to her customers in town.

The problem for Wynne was she had about 60 customers, and he wanted all of those customers for his own business, because it would have been about 10 percent of the client base that he had. So she needed to be put in her place, and what better way, he'd thought, to dismiss the work of Ruth Belville than to give a lecture to a bunch of city men in the city of London and give them a little bit of light relief. So a few weeks before the daylight-savings Select Committee, Wynne had set off on another diatribe, and he'd said this, which involved Ruth Belville.

He said to the men, 'It may be interesting and amusing to some of you to learn how Greenwich Mean Time was distributed amongst the clock and watch trade in London before the present arrangements came into vogue.' He said, 'A woman, possessed of a chronometer, obtained permission from the Astronomer Royal of the time to call up the observatory and have it corrected as often as she pleased. She then made it the business of her life, until she reached a great age, to call upon her customers with the correct time. And on her retirement, this useful work was, and even today is, carried on by her successor. Still a female, I think.'

I mean, talk about damning with faint praise. This was a really serious fly in the ointment for St. John Wynne. And we'll find out in a future podcast just what his lecture had as an effect on Ruth Belville and the history of timekeeping.

Natasha: David, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks very much.

David: Thank you.