If you were a sailor, accurate time was pretty important. Lots of maritime communities used time balls to sync up the clocks on ships. https://en.wikipedia.or

If you were a sailor, accurate time was pretty important. Lots of maritime communities used time balls to sync up the clocks on ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_ball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_ball (This is also where the NYC Times Square ball drop on New Year's Eve comes from) Technically, you had a farther and faster reach with an optical system than you did with a church bell. But at this scale the error difference wasn't that large.