A time ball is a large, wooden or metal ball that moves up and down a pole, and which is dropped at a predetermined time of day. Because precise timekeeping is essential to the determination of longitude at sea, time balls were principally erected to allow navigators aboard nearby ships to synchronize their marine chronometers with a reference time standard controlling the ball.
A time ball is a large, wooden or metal ball that moves up and down a pole, and which is dropped at a predetermined time of day. Because precise timekeeping is essential to the determination of longitude at sea, time balls were principally erected to allow navigators aboard nearby ships to synchronize their marine chronometers with a reference time standard controlling the ball.
Source: Wikipedia "Time ball" · CC BY-SA 4.0
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