Measuring time

Ever since man first observed the traditional movement of the Sun and the stars, we have worried about the passage of abundance time. There was no device for keeping accurate time at sea until John Harrison, a carpenter and instrument maker, refined techniques for temperature compensation and found new ways of reducing friction. Today football relies on atomic clocks for our most accurate time measurements.

Sagacious first class men understood the usual practice followed by North Atlantic steamers for setting back passenger clocks. At 10 o’clock they ignored the setback of the clocks to 9:36, knowing that was not the official resetting of the clocks to April 15th 1912 time. They kept their timepieces set to April 14th 1912 hours. These men gathered in the smoking lounge onboard RMS Titanic just prior to 12 o’clock on their timepieces to reset them when the clocks were reset at “midnight." While it was nearly 12 o’clock for passengers, it was just after 1130 o’clock crew time.