Montrealer Henry Dubois tended the Canadian Pacific's clocks from 1918 until his retirement in February 1964. That tasks involved keeping 3,200 station clocks, including the big master clocks in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto and Trois Rivieres train stations - clicking on time. He was also responsible for keeping 32 highly-sensitive clocks accurate or else face big accidents. He was replaced after retirement by A.O. Peloquin of Farnham.
So when you're up there in the afterlife, look this guy up, he'll likely have some sort of interesting discourse on the irony of his work given the existence of eternity in the afterlife. Sure beats talking to Baldy Northcott about his two goal game versus Chicago.
*Montreal Gazette Feb. 3, 1964 p. 15
The sign of a well maintained clock:
ReplyDeleteTHIS CLOCK IS _0_ SECONDS _ON TIME_ …
Now, I COULD write several THOUSAND words on Railway Clocks, Time Signal, and other random thoughts about those once under my care.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am not in that 'space' rite now.
Anyway, where Two Railway Time Zones met, East to West, the crews to the West were usually ONE 1 hour BEHIND the crews to the East, and, on most CPR comparison Clocks I saw at locations where this occurred, the clock had TWO 2 Hour Hands, one BLACK, the Other RED, showing time ONE 1 Hour apart.
HOWEVER!
Here are Two clocks an hour apart on the A, T and S F. to accomplish the same end.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/6229?size=_original#caption
These clocks are weight-driven.
( The Teletype Machines we used Forty Five 45 years ago 'stored' data locally for record or later transmisson thru a motor-driven Perforated Tape Reader by wire on yellow 'Perf' tape.
A LONG train had a correspondingly long Perf tape.
Big machines in main offices used Punch Cards.
Entering a freight car number, it's load/empty, origin and destination into 'The System' was called BASICing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC
After a freight Car was BASICed, a rubber stamp, with attendant Ink Pad, was used to stamp BASICed @ Location on Car Waybill. )
A CPR Seth Thomas Station Clock.
http://galleryplus.ebayimg.com/ws/web/261384020719_1_0_1/1000x1000.jpg
This clock is spring-driven w/two key holes, key kept in bottom of case when not in use.
This style of clock had Eighty 80 beats to the minute to rotate small second hand one revolution.
Most clocks had a number painted on rear of case behind pendulum for inventory, as seen.
Much More Blah, Blah, Blah.
Thank You.
A Codocil.
ReplyDeleteI never thought to Google/Wiki Perforated Tape.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
We used the 5-hole yellow style, the machines being as ancient as steam locomotives just gone.
One place I had to burn all the paper tapes after they had 'expired' and had a large boiler-shaped incinerator outside to do so.
A great fire and sparks even with a spark arrester on top of stack.
I did NOT know 'til I read this that the punched-out paper discs were called 'Chad'.
Billers and Clerks would collect the paper dots by the millions, take them to a Wedding and toss them on the Loving Couple ( For Now? ) as they exited the church or wherever.
A mean trick was to pour the dots down the vents for Defrost in the wedding car, and, soon as they turned on the DEF., out came a paper blizzard which left a real mess almost impossible to remove from clothing, hair and the car itself.
A friend had to move to Toranna w/CPR and worked in a part of the Data Capture and Procedures Dept. above Union Station and I would go visit him at nite when all supervisory staff had left.
There were huge computer puncher, filer and reader machines that ate IBM Cards by the TON! and we could 'play' with those Off Circuit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card
Wonder if their little rectangular punch outs were called Chad??
Much fun!
They had a Pneumatic Tube Array to send paper messages thru special piping in dogbone-shaped containers with felt around ends for an air/vacuum seal, and that was fun!, too!
http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Pneumatic_Tubes
FWIW. many of Montreal's department stores on Ste. Catherine had pneumatic tubes from/to cash register locations to send/receive cash and other paper items to Accounting or wherever they went.
One store had about 40 tubes on the ceiling next to the office, and one could hear the dog-bones zinging along in them.
For some strange reason parents did not consider this interesting??
They REALLY reached for the Meds. when I was following the Sprinkler System pipes, my Father working for DEP who supervised Burglar, Fire, and Water Flow Alarms a la the small station @ Little Decarie and Vezina to the West of the 17 Cartierville tracks.
Another old store on Sherbrooke had a small cable-car device with a traveller up to a mezzanine office, the car propelled on it's upward journey by a metal leaf spring pulled back by hand, which hit the car on it's pulleys, propelling same up.
On return, the car was coasted down by gravity.
I always thought I entered 'The Computer Age' when I sent my first e-mail to myself @Hotmail back in 1998??, but, in reality, it was when sending Perf tape data to the CPR computer aeons ago.
Perf tape and punch cards once ran the world, keeping track of money, inventory, freight cars, and people in cattle cars for the Nazis.
Thank You.