In this ingenious invention, the object of Professor Wheatstone was
to enable a simple clock to indicate exactly the same time in as many
different places, distant from each other, as may be required. A
standard clock in an observatory, for example, would thus keep in order
another clock in each apartment, and that too with such accuracy, that
_all of them, however numerous, will beat dead seconds audibly with as
great precision as the standard astronomical time-piece with which
they are connected_. But, besides this, the subordinate time-pieces
thus regulated require none of the mechanism for maintaining or
regulating the power. They consist simply of a face, with its second,
minute, and hour hands, and a train of wheels which communicate motion
from the action of the second-hand to that of the hour-hand, in the
same manner as an ordinary clock-train. Nor is this invention confined
to observatories and large establishments. The great horologe of St.
Paul’s might, by a suitable network of wires, or even by the existing
metallic pipes of the metropolis, be made to command and regulate all
the other steeple-clocks in the city, and even every clock within the
precincts of its metallic bounds. As railways and telegraphs extend
from London nearly to the remotest cities and villages, the sensation
of time may be transmitted along with the elements of language; and
the great cerebellum of the metropolis may thus constrain by its
sympathies, and regulate by its power, the whole nervous system of the
empire.