UNIVERSAL TIME

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 104, 29 October 1925, Page 18

UNIVERSAL TIME

AN INGENIOUS INVENTION

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.).

LONDON, 22nd September,

. Mr. Roland Berrill, who left by the Oronsay for Duncdin a day or two ago, takes with him a number of watches and clocks which will be shown at the Exhibition. His invention is what might be called a "world standard true local and twenty-four hour timepiece.'"

With the present-day system of naming time it is impossible to deal with persons living outside one's own zone without difficult calculations which will differ with every zone. Berrill'a world time is universal. If is it 244 o'clock, for instance, in Paris it is 244 o'clock in Sydney or Dunodin. The twenty-four hours of the day are divided'into 300 units, each unit being four minutes of pre-sent-day time. A large hand .shows the tens, a number appears at a little window and shows the unit, and a small hand indicates the fractions of four minutes.

This ingenious invention may not come into general use, though it has as good a claim as the decimal sj'stem in weights and measures, but for certain professions it is obviously invaluable. Jn broadcasting over great areas such a statement as "concert at 8 p.m." may he quite meaningless. Or when tlie operator at a cable station in mid-Pacific puts "Passed here at It a.m." mi messages coming through In; known that such a statement is meaningless without calculations. The .same 1 applies to vessels .signalling or to aeroplanes.

Mr. Herrill in perhaps n little in advance of (lie world's requirements, hut the invention is sure to come into geneva! use. in certain technical professions where lime is ;in importing item. The inventor is 11 young barrister who lias not practised Jiiw profession. He was in the Plying Corps during llic war, iiml flow' Cor Ihii Second Australian Army Corps ;i|. the BiiUle.of Mcssiiics. S~>, J/'leet street.