PE was ringing in time 150 years ago at Donkin lighthouse

RINGING IN NEW YEAR: The famous time ball in
New York’s Times Square

WHEN the famous time ball in New York’s Times Square descends at midnight on Thursday, people around the world celebrate the start of the new year, but what many Nelson Mandela Bay residents are unaware of is that the city once had a daily time ball which was erected 150 years ago.

On August 26 1865 at 1pm, a small crowd gathered around the Donkin lighthouse and cheered as a large black ball attached to an iron bar, the “time ball”, was officially dropped for the first time – remotely controlled from a clock in Cape Town.

The time ball, with a diameter of 1.2m, was made of wickerwork covered with painted black canvas.

This was attached to a hinged 4.2m iron bar and hung downwards with the shorter arm pointing upwards until shortly before the drop.

The entire assembly was attached to the catwalk at the top of the lighthouse.

When the electric signal was transmitted from Cape Town, a trigger mechanism was set in motion.

As the deadline approached, the minutes slowly ticked by until they turned to seconds. A loud cheer went up as the onlookers witnessed the ball dropping.

Although the New York ball descends once a year, Port Elizabeth’s time ball was dropped daily at 1pm, Cape mean time, with the exception of Sundays and public holidays.

This time check allowed mariners to set their chronometers, the instrument used in conjunction with a sextant to calculate positions.

At the time it was believed it was the first remote-controlled time-ball drop from a clock 800km away.

Time balls were invented in 1818, rendering signal guns obsolete, and were soon found at ports all around the globe.

Astronomers at the newly built Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope – now the SA Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town – had been determining time since 1820, but individual municipalities based their local time on astronomical observations of the sun.

For many years, inventors around the world had been working on ways to send messages via telegraph wires and the first time-signal in England was sent on August 5 1852.

The Cape Colony was not far behind and the first telegraph line in South Africa was brought into service between Cape Town and Simonstown on April 25 1860.

On June 1 1861, the Donkin Reserve lighthouse was brought into commission and shortly thereafter, on December 31 1861, the Cape of Good Hope Telegraph Company’s line between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown was officially opened.

By 1889, time balls were also being dropped simultaneously in Kimberley (by 1878), in East London (by 1889) and in Port Alfred (by 1893).

According to a paper by Geoff Evans, head of the electronics department at the SA National Observatory, civil time was only arranged for the whole Cape Colony on February 7 1892.

One of the few times the time ball failed to drop in Port Elizabeth and East London was in 1901 during the South African War, from 1899 to 1902, after the telegraph line was sabotaged by the Boers.

Time balls were in regular use until radio time signals, which could be received worldwide, were transmitted from the Royal Observatory in the UK from December 19 1927, thus rendering time balls obsolete.

• Sources: EP Herald, August 28 1865; Port Elizabeth, a social chronicle to the end of 1945 by Margaret Harradine: History of Time Guns and Time-Balls in South Africa by G P Evans, December 27 1993.