On entering his office, Grandad reaches to the top shelf to fetch his box of memorabilia, his personal collection of relics and photographs that provide for him a timeless portal to years gone by. <\/p>\n
He hands me his grandfather\u2019s pocket watch, the cold metal of its dented case sitting snug in my palm. Grandad encourages me to wind it up, as he had done before. My 21st century hands, accustomed to the convenience of the automated digital time of my iPhone lock-screen, don\u2019t feel worthy of the venerable device. <\/p>\n
Embarrassingly, I\u2019m not sure whether to turn the stem winder clockwise or anticlockwise, so I try both. Much to my delight, the dormant timepiece\u2019s second hand comes to life, and the steady ticks of its mechanical heartbeat start to measure the passage of time once more. <\/p>\n
Grandad recalls how his grandfather proudly donned this portable timepiece during a rather unusual period for Irish timekeeping. The Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 established Dublin Mean Time (DMT) as Ireland\u2019s national standard time. <\/p>\n
Prior to 1880, each town operated on local mean solar time, with noon occurring when the sun reached its highest point in the sky at a given location, such that the time that people observed reflected the local environment rather than a distinct standard. <\/p>\n
DMT was based on the local mean time recorded at Dunsink Observatory, just northwest of Dublin<\/a> city. Dunsink\u2019s location being a little over six degrees west of Royal Observatory Greenwich meant that DMT was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the official time in Great Britain. <\/p>\n Over the 36-year lifespan of Ireland\u2019s unique time zone, this distinction came to be seen as an administrative inconvenience in an increasingly interconnected world. This was particularly evident in Ireland\u2019s transport and communication systems. <\/p>\n Mailboats from Holyhead in Wales used to arrive at Kingstown (now D\u00fan Laoghaire<\/a>) harbour to be met by the Dublin and Kingstown railway line, which Grandad recalls extending right out on to the pier to collect passengers and parcels headed for Dublin. <\/p>\n The accuracy and co-ordination required for such meticulous operations encouraged the introduction of the Time (Ireland) Act 1916. But Irish nationalists interpreted it differently. To them, abandoning DMT and synchronising Irish and British time zones symbolised a loss of Irish identity, which was especially important at such a pivotal time in Ireland\u2019s push for independence. <\/p>\n So while GMT was observed by the banks and post offices, it was rejected by much of the Irish population, who tenaciously stuck with Dublin Mean Time, or, as some locals liked to call it, Old God\u2019s Time. <\/p>\n From 1865 until 1916, the famous Time Ball on top of the Ballast Office (then headquarters of Dublin Port) at Aston Quay dropped every day at 1pm to allow navigators on ships in the Liffey to calibrate their chronometers. <\/p>\n The dropping of the Time Ball started to follow GMT around 1914, a couple of years prior to the official switch, but locals knew that the descent of this giant bronze ball down its mast indicated a local time of 12.35pm, as deliberated by Leopold Bloom in James Joyce\u2019s Bloomsday. <\/p>\n Meanwhile in Tullow, my great-great-grandfather\u2019s hometown in Co Carlow<\/a>, there was no such sophisticated community timepiece. And so possession of a personal timepiece conferred considerable social status. <\/p>\n One could estimate the approximate time based on when the church bells last chimed, or even the apparent position of the sun in the sky. But only the gentleman with a silver chain peeking out from his waistcoat might know the right time.<\/p>\n