Electrical Timekeeping

Abstract

SOME few years ago, Mr. Hope-Jones brought out his well-known book "Electric Clocks, and I had the privilege which I much enjoyed of writing a notice of it, which appeared in NATURE of October 17, 1931. I am very glad to be enabled again to notice a new book—"Electric Timekeeping"—by the same author. I say a new book because the title is a little different. I think it should be called a new and enlarged edition. "Electric Clocks" came out when it had become generally recognized that the Shortt clock had revolutionized our ideas as to the possible attainable accuracy of pendulum clocks, and when for the first time the uncertainty had been brought down to a matter of a second in a year. There was then full justification for the author, who had himself invented many of the features on which success depended, adopting the role of the high priest and laying down the law as to what is good and what is bad. As anyone who has seen the first would expect, the present work does not falter in this respect.

Electrical Timekeeping

By F. Hope-Jones. Pp. xx + 275 + 6 plates. (London: N. A. G. Press, Ltd., 1940.) 10s. net.