Living in a pioneering settlement in New Zealand brought little or no relaxation to the rule of clock time. At the time of European settlement clocks and watches had achieved a level of accuracy sufficient for everyday living. However, they needed to be wound and reset regularly. The question then arose – what was the time? In the absence of public clocks the immediate solution was to consult some other means of timekeeping, such as sun dials. Records of sun dials in the early New Zealand towns are sparse and it is unknown just how many were brought to New Zealand from the 1820s. Those that did come to New Zealand were expensive and likely to be owned by the wealthy, such as farmers, who sited them on a specially constructed stone plinth in a garden free from unwanted shadows.
Sun dials were an indicator of a desire to create settlements. Their installation also required some planning and use of geometry. It was not a matter of acquiring a sun dial from somewhere. It would not have „told‟ the local apparent solar time accurately. This was because of an important technical consideration – the latitude of the site where the sundial was to be placed. This determined the angle, and therefore shapes, of the gnomon (rod).3 Invercargill‟s latitude for example, is approximately 46º 24´ south, whereas Auckland‟s is approximately 36º 52´ south, which equates to about a 10º difference.
For those communities, such as goldfields, which had neither sun dials nor an accurate clock from which to check whether a clock or watch was running fast or slow, an alternative method was available. The Cromwell Argus (1870) offered a solution:
Get two pieces of copper, tin, or brass, about six inches long, and an inch wide.
In the middle of these cut a slit about three inches long (the slit to be as narrow as possible to see through). Fix these pieces opposite one another, about six inches apart, so as to be enabled to see through both slits, facing the north or south, in a position not to be readily moved. Watch when any fixed star passes the slits, and note the time by the clock. Next night, watch the same star pass the slits, and if the time is four minutes earlier the clock is right; if more than four minutes, the clock is going slow; and if less than four minutes the clock is going fast.4
3 Pronounced as „noh-mon‟.
4 CA (19 Jan. 1870). This is because the length of a sidereal day is about 23 hours and 56 minutes.
From the late 1840s, in England, the principle supplier of the correct clock time was a government official – the Crown appointed Astronomer Royal based at Greenwich – although a standard time was not in universal practice. New Zealand in the first half of the nineteenth Century had no government appointed astronomer, let alone a central observatory from which to make observations. The mantle of responsibility therefore fell to visiting ships‟ captains to advise local residents of GMT as registered by their chronometers, enabling them to calculate the correct local time. And, from the 1840s, there was a small number of clock and watch makers with astronomy skills scattered around New Zealand. New Zealand‟s first timekeepers were therefore not public servants and they did not draw a government salary; they served their communities without remuneration because there was a need. The knowledge and skill they applied to their job rather than their ability to secure an influential sponsor and compete for the position secured them the unofficial title of timekeepers in their community.5 This was because the watches and clocks they had for sale had to be as accurate as possible. The necessary accuracy was attained because each business had a reliable, accurate, reference clock, known as a
„regulator‟, against which the performance of all other clocks and watches was checked before they left the workshop.6
Who were New Zealand‟s first regulators of time, how many were there, and what other forms of timekeeping operated during the first twenty-eight years of organised settlement, 1840 to 1868? The following tables, Table 4.1 and 4.2, read in conjunction with Appendix Three, are an attempt to answer these questions. Appendix Three supplies the names of the clockmakers, the dates they commenced business, some business details and footnoted sources.7 The tables are a first attempt to look at the organisation of timekeeping in frontier New Zealand and quantify the dogged effort to bring accurate clock time to every New Zealand town and city. The first column in the tables indicates the number of regulator clocks (RC) that were in each community, for example, Auckland which had 29. Each number represents a clock/watchmaker, as each had a regulator clock in his shop from which his shop
5 J. Garner, By His Own Merits, Sir John Hall – Pioneer, Pastoralist and Premier (Hororata, NZ, 1995), p. 25, for following quote, “the harsh reality was that a sponsor often counted for more than ability when it came to obtaining a worthwhile position with future prospects.”
6 Glennie and Thrift, p. 335.
7 The Appendix 3a, list of clockmakers‟ names, pp. 132-7, is believed to be substantially complete, but further research will likely uncover additional methods of timekeeping employed by each community.
See Appendices 3b-d, pp. 138-40.
clocks and those of the surrounding community could be set. This should not be read as if there were 29 in Auckland for the full period, as businesses came and went: it means only that these businesses operated in Auckland for at least some part of the period 1840-1868. This applies also to the other services listed, such as observatories:
they did not function for the full twenty-eight years, but only part of that time.
Table 4.1. Timekeeping methods in the North Island 1840-1868. 8
Location: Methods of Timekeeping:
Abbreviations Used: RC – Regulator Clocks, Obs – Observatories, TB – Time Balls, PC – Public Clocks, SD – Sun Dials, B – Bells, Go – Gongs, Gu – Guns, TO – Telegraph Offices.
Notes: Italics indicates privately funded and operated services. The list of regulator clocks indicates that during the period under review there was at some stage the given number of clockmakers who each had such a clock.
For example, in Wellington, 16 did not continuously operate. The list excludes clocks inside government departments, trade businesses and other institutions.
*These telegraph offices were not connected to Wellington. All offices had a fairly similar longitude and probably kept to Auckland mean time.
8 These were drawn from newspapers listed on Papers Past as at 29 February 2012. The key search words were „watchmaker‟ and „clockmaker‟. See also Winsome Shepherd, Gold & Silversmithing in Nineteenth & Twentieth Century New Zealand, (Wellington, 1995). This author used trade directories as her primary source. Table 4.1 and 4.2 are believed to be substantially complete.
Table 4.2. Timekeeping methods in the South Island 1840-1868.
Abbreviations Used: RC – Regulator Clocks, Obs – Observatories, TB – Time Balls, PC – Public Clocks, SD – Sun Dials, B – Bells, Go – Gongs, Gu – Guns, TO – Telegraph Offices.
Notes: Italics indicates privately funded and operated. The list of regulator clocks indicates that during the period under review there was at some stage the given number of clockmakers who each had such a clock.
For example, in Dunedin, 35 did not continuously operate. The list excludes clocks inside government departments, trade businesses and other institutions.
A study of Tables 4.1 and 4.2, in conjunction with Table 5.1 and Fig. 5.3 raises the issue of continuity of service. We know from a variety of sources that a number of the businesses listed above operated for only a few years because some were sold, some shifted to another town looking for better prospects, and others went bankrupt. A study of the last column reveals the central government‟s concerted effort to have a telegraph office, with a clock regulated to a standard time, in as many communities as possible by 2 November 1868, when New Zealand mean time was enforced. Fig. 5.3 indicates that about 75 percent of New Zealand‟s population, excluding Auckland and Taranaki, lived in a community which had access to a telegraph office clock on 2 November 1868. This provided most people with the continuity of service that was often lacking in earlier times.