A little obscure information for the group. I hope its' not too OT as it is based in Yankee injenuity. I used to travel to Groton CT frequently for work. And I always thought the nearby places like the Mystic Seaport Museum were nothing but tourist traps. But I actually went to the Groton Mystic area for a vacation once, and thought to visit the Museum, thinking I wouldn't be there long.
WRONG... This is one of the most interesting and fascinating places ever. I spent all day there. There is a display there about the construction of wooden ships. In modern terms, they are a system. There is the keel, the heart of the structure and load bearing. Upon which are set the masts, which bear both great weight and also the sails' driving force upon the ship. And then there are hull frames. I used to think that these were only to provide the ship hull shape, but they are actually designed to distribute the structure loads and strengths throughout the hull. And then there is more, most fascinating to this navy engineer. But I digress...
The museum is laid out as a maritime town with all the services one might have found in a wooden ship fishing/whaling era. There is a sailmaker shop, a cooperage (for whaler's oil) and so on, and much more. I wandered into the instrument shop and found an answer to a very old question that I had since I was a kid.
Don't know why, but when I was a little kid, I wondered why a ball droping down a pole for New Years?! It seemed stupid. But during the two hours I spent in the shop I learned a story... In Boston Harbor there was a gun fired every day at noon so that all the ships there could syncrhonize their time pieces. But as Boston Harbor grew and the time dependant navigation became more precise, the cannon boom became less reliable. Those ships farther away from the cannon could hear the sound almost two seconds later than it had been fired, and this became a problem for modern navigation based on precise timing. Someone came up with the idea to have a large red ball on a pole, on top of the tallest building on the tallest point of land on the harbor. The ball could move up and down the pole and as a visual signal it was dropped every day at noon instead of the cannon boom. The red ball dropping could be seen throughout the harbor, and seen by everyone at the speed of light, must faster than the speed of sound like the cannon. The ball dropping became the standard.
Now I don't know what they did on foggy days, but clearly, they must have worked something out. And I think that perhaps the ball dropping may have been the inspiration for the New Years Eve tradition in Times Square. And also was the answer for this question that bugged me since I was a little kid.
Happy New Years and Happy 2008 Everyone!
Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Seaâ„¢ : Home
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