Delving deeply at the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre ... again!

Yesterday Sue and I returned to the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre on yet another of their 'Delve Deeper' tours ... this time to see how they display, store, and conserve their huge collection of clocks.

We were met by the wonderfully-titled 'Curator of Time’ (very Whovian!), Emily Akkermans, who began by explaining the difference between the solar and sidereal day and the importance of the development of the chronograph to astronomy and navigation. She then took us into one of the storage buildings, where a number of important examples of chronographs and associated devices were on show.

These included the special alarm clock used by John Pond’s assistant to take regular sightings of particular stars (John Pond was Astronomer Royal from 1811 to 1836) and chronometers that were carried on some of the most important scientific voyages undertaken during the nineteenth century.

The box on the left of this photograph is the remains of one of the boxed chronometers taken on the famous Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage. The Museum does not have a key to open the box and the Curator is unsure how complete the contents are ... but hopefully its secrets will be revealed one day.

Although described as 'useless' in the records, this chronometer was good enough to be used within the Royal Observatory to check other chronometers against each other. Its was originally housed in an octagonal box, the remains of which can still be seen. It is thought that it was used during John Pond's tenure as Astronomer Royal.

The final exhibit we were shown was part of the electro-magnetic clock that both released the Greenwich Time Ball and transmitted the correct and accurate time to the various railway companies with termini in London, thus leading to the use of Greenwich Mean Time by the railways on their timetables. This in turn led to the widespread use of GMT or ‘railway time’ across the United Kingdom.

The hourly signal relay from the electro-magnetic clock system.

The hourly signal relay contains some parts that are made of silk and gutta-percha. In order to preserve these, this object is not on public display.

A contemporary drawing of the time signal apparatus of which the hourly signal relay formed part. IT can be seen at the tope left-hand side of the drawing.

The next of these tours will look at the storage and preservation of paper artefacts, and Sue and I hope to go on it.