In a few hours, the world will start marking the entry into a new year. Here in the Great Land, it will only be 8 p.m. when the ball drops in New York City; Hawaii won’t see 2024 until an hour after Alaska. Nowadays, we take this kind of thing for granted, but ’twas not always thus.
Time was when every county courthouse boasted a tower, at the top of which was a four-sided clock, with one face aimed at the primary points of the compass, so the town’s time was visible to all. Most of these clocks were run by a single clockwork connected to all four faces, which I only know because my brother had a side business for some years repairing those clocks all around the upper Midwest. For many years, those clocks, as well as people’s clocks and watches, were set to a local “sun time,” calibrated by marking high noon each day, and noon was often marked by a bell being rung or a whistle…
