[TO THE EDITOR Of THE "SPECTATOR-1
Sin,—The correspondence in this and other journals has given Mr. Willett's scheme Wide publicity, yet it is remarkable that no serious objection to it has been found. Difficulties which have occurred to your readers have disappeared at sight, or are disappearing with the advance of science. As an instance of the latter, I take the vast number of clocks, and the necessity for altering them individually. Time itself is over- coming that difficulty, for independent key-wound clocks are rapidly being replaced by electric time service, that modern method of time-keeping whereby uniformity and accuracy of all the clocks in a large building are Bemired without winding up or any other attention. Though this branch of the electrical engineering profession is yet young, some thousands of clock-dials whose works consist merely of one wheel and an electro-magnet are at work in this country, and it is obvious that the setting of them forward and backward in April and September in accord with Mr. Willett's scheme can be accomplished with the greatest ease from the few controlling pendulums or master-clocks which operate them. It would be quite possible to arrange for the mere depression of a lever in the controlling apparatus twice a year (April 1st and September 1st) to let the master-clock accomplish the twenty minutes per Sunday advance in April, and the twenty minutes per Sunday retardation in September, automatically. In the years of endeavour necessary to the realisation of such a scheme there is little doubt that electrical time service, by its rapidly extending use, will have removed one of the difficulties when the time for the change comes.—
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