Anthorn aerials

If you look carefully into the sunset in the pictures of the previous post, you can make out the aerials at Anthorn, 10 miles north of Wigton. They now have the Greenwich Time Signal. This takes some thinking about. Noon should technically be defined as the time at which the Sun is highest in the sky. This varies from place to place even within England. So noon in Carlisle is 8 minutes later than in London if done this way. Before the industrial revolution, this is exactly how they set the time on the big tower clocks in each time. Then they invented the train which ran to timetables. If each town had its own locally set time, the timetables wouldn't work so it was decided to standardise the UK so that all clocks said 12noon when the Sun was highest over Greenwich in London, because that's where the official observatory and naval headquarters were. A signal was sent out to all towns to synchronise the clocks. This type of time is called Greenwich Mean Time (G.M.T.) Until recently, the signal was sent out by radio waves from big aerials next to the M1 at Rugby. Now we've got the honour of broadcasting the nation's time!