UNIVERSAL TIME.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 284, 4 November 1925, Page 7

UNIVERSAL TIME.

AN INGENIOUS INVENTION. ONE STANDARD FOR WORLD. LONDON, Sept. 22. Mr Roland Berrill, who left by the Oronsay for New Zealand a day or two ago, takes with him a number of watches and clocks which will be shown at the Dunedin Exhibition. His invention is what might be called a "world standard true local and 24hour timepiece." V ith 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. Ben-ill's world time is universal. If it is 214 o’clock, for instance, in Paris it is 244 o’clock in Sydney or Auckland. The 24 hours of the day are divided into 360 units, each unit being four minutes of present-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 system in weights and measures, but for certain professions it is obviously invaluable. In broadcasting over great areas such a statement as “concert at 3 p.m. ' may be quite meaningless. Or when the operator at a eablo station in mid-Pacific puts “Passed here at II a.m. ’on messages coming through lie knows that such a statement is meaningless without calculations. The same applies to vessels signalling or to aeroplanes. Mr Berrill is perhaps a little in advance of the world’s requirements, but the fhvention is sure to come into general use in certain technical professions where time is an important item. The inventor is a young barrister who has not practised his profession. He was in the Flying Corps during the war and flew lor the 2nd Australian Army Corps at the Battle of Messines.