{"id":13894,"date":"2011-11-14T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2011\/11\/14\/time-gun.html"},"modified":"2011-11-14T10:15:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T18:15:00","slug":"time-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2011\/11\/14\/time-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"time gun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sadly, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cix.co.uk\/~dliddlea\/timeguns\/worldgun.html\">time gun<\/a> isn't what I, as a science fiction fan, initially thought it was.<\/p>\n<p>However, it is nonetheless kinda cool. A time gun is apparently a cannon or other piece of artillery that's fired every day at a specific time, to allow people nearby (including passing ships) to set their clocks accurately. An early form of network time server, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Time_ball\">time ball<\/a> is a related concept, using a visual instead of an auditory signal. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Times_Square_Ball\">Times Square Ball<\/a> is a variant.<\/p>\n<p>One problem with using sound as a time signal is that sound is relatively slow. The niftiest thing I found when I looked up &ldquo;time gun&rdquo; is an 1861 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edinphoto.org.uk\/0_maps\/0_maps_of_edinburgh_time-gun_1861.htm\">Edinburgh time gun map<\/a>, showing &ldquo;the time taken for the sound of the one o'clock gun to travel from Edinburgh Castle to different parts of Edinburgh and Leith&rdquo; (as the website puts it).<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sadly, a time gun isn&#8217;t what I, as a science fiction fan, initially thought it was. However, it is nonetheless kinda cool. A time gun is apparently a cannon or&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-to-me-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}