zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

Yes I can see that-just as there was time variations there were variations in musical pitch until the invention of the equally tempered scale!

But once it was decided, because of rail networks, that standard time was required for synchronisation of services etc, how did all the various rail clock makers standardise their seconds, minutes and hours and then check the accuracy of this standard? Perhaps trains were minutes late but it was accepted due to the difficulty of time measurement? Perhaps accuracy was only 'invented' with the advent of tuning fork/quartz/atomic clocks and was a gradual, rather than a stochastic process.