The 1833 time ball at Port Louis, Mauritius: the forgotten service for chronometer calibration (2019)
Kinns, Roger (Author)
International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology
Volume: 89
Issue: 1-2
Pages: 264-275
The time ball service at Port Louis, Mauritius started in April 1833, six months before the Greenwich service. It was established by John Augustus Lloyd who had been appointed Surveyor-General and Civil Engineer in 1831. His chosen time ball arrangement, described in a lecture by Sir John Herschel in London during 1836, used a stationary black ball on a white background behind a shutter whose complete closure, not the moment of release, signalled the exact time. Lloyd departed Mauritius in 1849. The time service appears to have deteriorated through the 1850s and 1860s, with only an intermittent flag signal for an extended period, although a conventional time ball had been erected high on Signal Mountain in 1866.
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