[HN Gopher] Ruth Belville, the "Greenwich Time Lady" (2022)
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Ruth Belville, the "Greenwich Time Lady" (2022)
Author : throw0101b
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-03-09 14:00 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eehe.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (eehe.org.uk)
| throw0101b wrote:
| Also:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Belville
|
| * https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ruth-belville-the-greenwic...
|
| Via a weblog from the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation:
|
| * https://rntfnd.org/2025/03/09/the-greenwich-time-lady-sold-t...
| nhubbard wrote:
| Fans of Tom Scott's Citation Needed, if you haven't seen this...
| well
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzfiF9ccZvQ&list=PLrkYtXgEpu...
| throwaway_ewell wrote:
| Excited to see my village mentioned on the frontpages of HN!
| eb0la wrote:
| First time you go to London, you visit everything else; but
| Greenwich is great. Probably because is far from city center,
| but totally worth the visit. I guess next time I travel to
| London I'll stay there.
| Angostura wrote:
| The fast commuter boat from Greenwich to Westminster Pier is
| my favourite was to get into town
| colesantiago wrote:
| So is this not one of the earliest grifts?
| sampullman wrote:
| Grifting must be pre-historic.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Yeah, for real. They think that grifting was invented as
| recently as 1892? That's _insane_. One of the earliest known
| pieces of written language is some sanskrit calling one guy
| 's limestone a ripoff. Basically a bad Yelp review. Obviously
| you don't need reviews if everyone is honest, ergo grifting
| most likely existed before written language
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > One of the earliest known pieces of written language is
| some sanskrit calling one guy's limestone a ripoff.
| Basically a bad Yelp review.
|
| When you came, you said to me as follows: "I will give
| Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You
| left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put
| ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin)
| and said: "If you want to take them, take them; if you do
| not want to take them, go away!"
|
| Tale as old as time, really.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/EaNasir/
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _So is this not one of the earliest grifts?_
|
| This is one of the earliest instances of a Stratum 1 (2?) time
| server.
| bauruine wrote:
| She set her watch to the time of the Greenwich Observatory
| (Stratum 1) so it's Stratum 2 time server.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Would not the Observatory be Stratum 0, as it was the
| 'atomic clock' of its day?
|
| > _These are high-precision timekeeping devices such as
| atomic clocks, GNSS (including GPS) or other radio clocks,
| or a PTP-synchronized clock.[30] They generate a very
| accurate pulse per second signal that triggers an interrupt
| and timestamp on a connected computer. Stratum 0 devices
| are also known as reference clocks. NTP servers cannot
| advertise themselves as stratum 0. A stratum field set to 0
| in NTP packet indicates an unspecified stratum.[5]:21_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol#Clock
| _st...
| geodel wrote:
| Doesn't look like to me since people are buying time even
| today. And they feel okay about it.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It gives new/old meaning to the idiom "she wouldn't _give_ you
| the time of day " because that's worth money and it's gonna
| cost you!
|
| Can I interest you in some cockles or mussels?
| registeredcorn wrote:
| >After his death John's third wife Maria Elizabeth (nee Last)
| (1811-99), a teacher by profession, was denied a widow's pension
| so lobbied to take over the manual distribution to provide an
| income for herself and their baby daughter Elizabeth Ruth Naomi
| Belville (known as Ruth).
|
| It would be interesting to know if it was common practice for
| widows to be denied pension, and if so, for what reason.
| guestbest wrote:
| I wonder how many widows were taking a pension from the late
| John.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Good point
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There can only be one widow, surely...
| guestbest wrote:
| He had three wives in succession. Any one or three could
| make the claim. There was probably a limited budget that
| had to go through a small committee to allocate the new
| funds. After a while it runs out.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _He had three wives in succession._
|
| This means that the first two probably died.
|
| Edit:
|
| I've checked and indeed his first wife died in 1826
| (maybe during childbirth looking at the date), his second
| in 1851, he married his third wife that same year. Ruth
| was actually his 7th and last child. It was the 19th
| century. People didn't "just" divorce and people also
| tended to die of many deceases and during childbirth.
|
| > _Any one or three could make the claim._
|
| Well, no. He could only be married to one at the time of
| his death (even if the others were still alive) and so
| only leave one widow behind to make a claim.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Well, yes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alimony#England
| Under traditional English common law, a woman gave up her
| personal property rights on marriage (see Coverture).
| Upon separation from marriage, the husband retained the
| right to the wife's property, but, in exchange, had an
| ongoing responsibility to support the wife after
| dissolution of the marriage.[6][7] English law was
| amended by legislation including the Married Women's
| Property Act 1870 and Married Women's Property Act 1882
| which reformed women's property rights relating to
| marriage, by, for example, permitting divorced women to
| regain the property they owned before
| marriage.[7][26][27][28]
|
| "Dissolution" is a strong word considering traditional
| Christian beliefs, and it would seem that a man couldn't
| simply divorce a woman and her children and wash his
| hands of responsibilities, even if spending a year dead
| for tax purposes.
|
| Because a woman entering marriage with a dowry, with
| property, with capital assets: those would be entrusted
| to _the entire family_ and so the man, offspring, and
| heirs would end up with management of whatever resulted,
| during the marriage, after the divorce, and after his own
| bodily death
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't know but a probable answer is that she was "able-
| bodied", pand perhaps was not destitute, as I believe widows
| were not entitled to anything at the time simply for being a
| widow. Pensions were only introduced in 1908.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I do not know whether Anglican and other churches were able to
| provide charity such as soup kitchens or emergency food
| distributions, but some reasons given for the New Deal in the
| US was that many people were unwilling to accept charity from
| churches, especially with rising sectarianism, and for that
| same reason, charity/outreach operations had perhaps become
| fragmented, and literally slicing up the pie smaller and
| smaller, in terms of funding, volunteers, and coverage, for a
| multiplicity of humanitarian non-profits.
|
| Nowadays the State Governments simply fund, assist, and promote
| those non-profits, and mental health care, etc., so American
| taxpayers are not merely paying "church tax" but
| synagogue/church/mosque/temple/ashram taxes, to support the
| plurality of faith-based charities who serve the poor and
| marginalized. And that's why the government itself can be
| reduced in size and scope as public-private-religious
| partnerships take up the mantle.
| walrus01 wrote:
| For those who haven't read it in detail, the history of the
| invention and refinement of the marine chronometer is
| fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison
| eb0la wrote:
| If visit Greenwich Observatory you'll see Harrison sea clocks
| H1, H2, and H3.
|
| I had the luck (and honor!) to meet a volunteer guide - Stephen
| - that knew everything about clocks and explained it perfectly.
|
| When you meet him, say hello :-). My kid barely spoke English
| and Stephen had the patience and virtue to answer everything
| with a smile.
|
| Best guide I ever met.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| It is a wonderful place. The walk up the hill at my advance
| age was a challenge, but well worth it!
| noelwelsh wrote:
| This seems very mundane now that a Casio F-91W can give all the
| practical timekeeping position a person needs for the cost of a
| meal. I found it interesting the watch she used ("Mr Arnold") was
| some 40 years old when her father started the business and nearly
| 150 years old when she stopped. It was made by John Arnold[1],
| who essentially invented the accurate watch.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Arnold_(watchmaker)
| alex_young wrote:
| Surely Ruth Belville was the best antiquarian horologist of her
| or any time.
| danans wrote:
| > a teacher by profession, was denied a widow's pension so
| lobbied to take over the manual distribution to provide an income
| for herself and their baby daughter
|
| > she retired in 1892, at age 81
|
| > So Ruth was forced to move, for the last time to 57 Plough Lane
| in Beddington. She retired in 1940 and died aged 89
|
| The time synchronization story is carrying another ominous story
| about elderly working class poverty of the gilded age.
|
| Mother and daughter working until their 80s probably due to
| necessity, and the daughter being forced out of her home shortly
| before she died.
|
| Let's not go back.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I dunno... a job where I travel and walk outside and loyal
| customers sticking with me until I was ready to retire sounds
| pretty nice to me
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Nobody said you had to retire. If you want to work until your
| 80s, have at it.
|
| Just don't support a society where it's a _necessity_
| dwighttk wrote:
| _Necessity_ was merely postulated by original poster
| daveguy wrote:
| _Necessity_ was a fact in the early 1900s. So necessary
| people had their kids work for extra income. Did you
| never study history?
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Done! I curse you to have to work until you are in your
| eighties. May your sore joints and muscles, sub-par wages
| (part of the deal, you chose it!) and failing eyesight and
| hearing be a constant companion.
|
| If you're a man, don't forget your prostate, If a woman,
| change of life issues and being a second class citizens in
| most countries of the world.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Don't threaten me with a good time
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| A man can forget his prostate, but can a prostate ever
| forget its man?
| danans wrote:
| Sure, it's nice to have a job like that if you get paid a
| living wage, have a social safety net, secure housing, and no
| dependents.
|
| I have news for you: that job (and situation) didn't exist
| then, and doesn't exist now. It briefly existed in the few
| decades following WW2, but we have torn down much of the
| ideology and social infrastructure that made that possible.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Even if such promises were made and indeed kept for some
| people at no point that I am aware of was the situation
| ever long term stable. AFAIK Soviet Union guaranteed
| dignity in retirement and planned to not have to pay for it
| through achieving a post-monetary society. The US made
| similar guarantees and planed to out-grow the costs (i.e.
| ponzi scheme).
| danans wrote:
| > The US made similar guarantees and planed to out-grow
| the costs (i.e. ponzi scheme).
|
| If you're referring to Social Security in the US, it's no
| more a Ponzi scheme than your home mortgage payment is a
| Ponzi scheme. In reality it's a progressive tax scheme to
| prevent senior citizen poverty.
|
| To make Social Security solvent, lift the cap on Social
| Security taxes. Will the working and middle classes
| benefit more than the wealthy who will pay more in those
| taxes?
|
| Yes, and progressive taxation to prevent abject
| impoverishment of working and middle class seniors is a
| good thing.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The US would still need to outgrow its other problems if
| the US in general is to remain solvent. I am pretty
| doubtful that it can.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Yeah, the two rounds of huge tax cuts since our last
| semi-balanced budget really screwed us. As they were
| predicted to.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| That and danans 'one thing' seems rather simplistic /
| reductive. My view is the degradation of the US has been
| many things over a long time and we're lucky things
| lasted as long as they have been.
| danans wrote:
| > That and danans 'one thing' seems rather simplistic /
| reductive
|
| OK. Let's add some things. Free public schools,
| subsidized public universities, subsidized public
| vocational colleges, Medicare. All can be funded if we
| reverse the tens of trillions of wealth that we have
| channeled upwards with tax cuts for the wealthy and cut
| taxes for the working class.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| 'We'? Good luck with that. At least Tankies are honest
| about the degree of coercion required to get a population
| to agree on things.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It really is mostly that, plus the wars. The first round
| of cuts came at about the same time we started the wars,
| LOL. The political line was that the tax cuts and (some
| fucking how) the wars would "pay for themselves" but the
| CBO was like "um, no, here is approximately how many
| trillions this will add to the debt" and gee, the latter
| turned out to be way, way closer to correct.
|
| Now, of course, we also have the interest on all that new
| debt to worry about.
|
| [EDIT] To be clear, the Democrats are also to blame for
| carrying on with the tax cuts, sometimes _actively_ ,
| when they had opportunities to end them.
| IX-103 wrote:
| Oh, it's definitely simplistic.
|
| The problem is that real wages for the average person has
| been going down since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the
| wealthiest people are making more and more, but that
| extra money is not going to Social Security due to the
| cap. Additionally, due to longer lifespans and fewer
| children, the ratio of working to retired people went up.
| Productivity is also up, which can easily compensate for
| the change in workforce, but isn't enough to cover both
| that and the shift in income to fewer, wealthier people
| whose contributions are capped.
|
| The net effect is less money going to Social Security.
| The easy solution is to remove the cap. That's unfair for
| the wealthy, but is a lot easier than getting fairer and
| more equitable wages across the entire economy.
| echelon wrote:
| > It briefly existed in the few decades following WW2, but
| we have torn down much of the ideology and social
| infrastructure that made that possible.
|
| No. Post-WWII America experienced a period of economic
| tailwinds that will likely never exist again.
|
| Europe and Asia were in shambles after the war - bombed
| out, destroyed, male populations decimated - just as
| America was growing to peak industrial strength. America
| had a population boom, everything was cheap, and everyone
| was buying American goods. America had everything it needed
| - cheap resources, cheap land, abundant labor, and a
| totally captive worldwide market. No country has ever had
| every single variable flipped in their favor to such an
| outsized degree.
|
| As we reached the 70's - 90's, we started to outsource. Our
| labor had become more expensive, but we offset this with
| cheap imported goods. We were still extremely and
| unilaterally wealthy.
|
| Post China WTO, the wealth of America has been spent and
| "averaged out" over dozens of post-industrial economies.
| The market is so much larger than it was back then, and
| America doesn't possess hegemonic, unilateral economic
| power. Moreover, American industrial power has waned. The
| thing we had going for us - the American knowledge worker
| and the almighty power of the American consumer - was being
| met with increasing competition from everywhere.
|
| The industrialization "algorithm" continues on: India,
| Vietnam, Mexico. Every country that industrializes and
| leverages cheap labor can grow into a powerhouse in just a
| single generation.
|
| There are a lot of countries within spitting distance of
| America, especially if you group them together into blocs.
| The American consumer economy isn't so unique anymore, and
| we certainly haven't been producing our own goods for a
| long time.
|
| So the wealth of the Baby Boomers and their incredible
| economic tailwinds will not be felt again unless there's
| some wildly new disruption to the economic order. (AGI and
| automated manufacturing, maybe?)
|
| The reality is that the American middle class will shrink
| and people will have to work harder. The American market
| doesn't have magical superiority anymore.
| danans wrote:
| > No. Post-WWII America experienced a period of economic
| tailwinds that will likely never exist again.
|
| The UK didn't get bombed nearly to the extent of
| continental Europe, and it was a mature industrialized
| society - the first one in fact - yet it also experienced
| the post WW2 growth. Same for the the bombed-out
| countries like Germany and France.
|
| > As we reached the 70's - 90's, we started to outsource.
| Our labor had become more expensive, but we offset this
| with cheap imported goods. We were still extremely and
| unilaterally wealthy.
|
| The US GDP didn't stop growing then, but wealth
| inequality vastly increased up to the present. The growth
| in inequality is the change, not the growing GDP.
|
| > Post China WTO, the wealth of America has been spent
| and "averaged out" over dozens of post-industrial
| economies
|
| Again, US GDP has effectively increased super-linearly
| since the 90s, even with China in the WTO. The problem is
| the benefits - even after the cheap consumer goods - have
| largely been realized by the wealthiest while the working
| class have been left out to dry. If the US hadn't gutted
| the working/middle class's jobs, assets and the public
| infrastructure they depend on during this period, perhaps
| we wouldn't have the instability we face now.
|
| > So the wealth of the Baby Boomers and their incredible
| economic tailwinds will not be felt again unless there's
| some wildly new disruption to the economic order. (AGI
| and automated manufacturing, maybe?)
|
| Wealth will continue to explode as technology allows ever
| greater efficiency and exploitation of resources.
|
| > The reality is that the American middle class will
| shrink and people will have to work harder. The American
| market doesn't have magical superiority anymore.
|
| Not if they stop fighting each other and instead fight
| for their piece of the productivity growth.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Except the part where you cannot save enough to retire and
| you don't have the income to support your current lifestyle
| louthy wrote:
| > In 1833 James Pond, the Astronomer Royal, introduced the
| Greenwich Time Ball...
|
| Did he stand up and say: "My name is Pond... James Pond"?
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| While we're on the subject of names...
|
| > John's third wife Maria Elizabeth (nee Last)
|
| I suppose it avoids any confusion as to what her last name is.
| dmurray wrote:
| Well, her first last name was Last, but her last last name
| was Belville.
|
| And her last first name was Elizabeth, and her first first
| name was Maria.
| jvan wrote:
| Was there a fourth wife, or was she the Last?
| dmd wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=het1kl-A8qw
| toast0 wrote:
| A shame she wasn't doing time distribution, or you could get
| the Last time.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Actually I think this is a typo, or a lapsus, and they are
| referring to John Pond [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pond
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It's always interesting to compare pictures. The approximate
| location of the article's picture of the Observatory Clock from
| the 1870s:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/7GSD3VytQ5cJ5ayR6
|
| It provides a good view of Canary Wharf's skyscrappers today.
| beardyw wrote:
| > Around 1911 she moved to Ewell Cottage, London Road, Ewell.
|
| The article seemed to wander off a bit at the end. But since this
| is from Epsom and Ewell ( nowhere near Greenwich) it now makes
| sense.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Seems like the red ball rising to near the top was regularly
| missed, I reckon an appropriately placed cannon that fired 5
| minutes before the ball dropped would've been a suitably British
| way to warn everyone
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| http://www.bidstonlighthouse.org.uk/fifty-years-after/
|
| Childhood memory: waiting for the gun to be fired.
| warrenski wrote:
| Funny you should mention a cannon, here in Cape Town the Noon
| Gun is still fired daily at noon local time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Gun
| munchler wrote:
| > When the sun is at its highest in the sky we call it midday or
| noon but the earth spins on a slightly inclined axis so the point
| closest to the sun is constantly changing. This change means that
| a person in London will have their midday at a different time to
| a person in New York and that will be different to a person in
| Beijing
|
| This is a very misleading description. The point closest to the
| sun would be constantly changing even if the axis of earth's spin
| was not inclined relative to the sun.
| FredPret wrote:
| Maybe they meant changing throughout the year
| gerdesj wrote:
| In the early noughties I ended up being called in as a consultant
| to sort out a somewhat broken Novell eDirectory. Password changes
| working sporadically, details not propagating sometimes - you
| probably know this story.
|
| I found a NTP stratum 1 source on site that someone had bought
| and forgotten about and the internet was available. DNS was also
| broken for IP and IPX/SPX was a bit special. I fixed up DNS and
| registered some host names and so on. I removed some odd routes
| in SPX and IP. I put all partitions on the three central office
| boxes and distributed the rest. I ran an awful lot of dsrepair
| and watched a lot of dstrace with various flags until the red
| turned to green. I'd get a partition into a decent state, then
| drop the replicas and rebuild them from the first one - all lots
| of fun.
|
| Anyway, it was DNS and NTP (it always is). That isn't the real
| punchline ...
|
| The company was called First Great Western (1)! I must stress
| this was not the time sources for their trains and operations
| equipment which was totally separate and properly managed by
| qualified professionals. Their general office IT needed a bit of
| a hand.
|
| So I can lay claim to bringing time to GWR, if you squint hard
| enough! A few years later I did a similar job for ScotRail, when
| they too still had Novell office servers. I used FGW's servers as
| sources - it seemed appropriate 8)
|
| (EDIT to add):
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time - mentions GWR in
| line 1 and links to all the other related info.
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(page generated 2025-03-13 23:01 UTC)