The transmission of time

Accurate timekeeping is important in scientific, technical and practical terms. Before the era of electricity, time could only be accurately known by carrying clocks from one place to another. Which was precisely how the longitude of AMERICA was determined. Time transmission benefited immediately from the advent of the telegraph in 1837, prompting the rapid spread of timekeeping by telegraph, especially since the development of the railways during this same period called for better synchronisation between the different areas of a country or continent. It was during this very same period - the second half of the 19th century - that the legal hour was standardised for entire countries and that Greenwich Mean Time emerged as the universal time reference. In Switzerland, transmission by telegraph was introduced by the Neuchâtel Observatory in 1860 whereby a daily signal was sent from Neuchâtel to the towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Locle and Bern.