The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Clock ticking on adjusting 4,000 museum timepieces
Seasonal hour changes are a twice-yearly headache for curator
Next Sunday, March 27, marks the start of British Summer Time – and the centenary of the country first adjusting all its clocks.
On Easter Sunday, households across the UK will put their watches and clocks forward an hour. While for most people it is a two-minute job to change all the timepieces in their house, spare a thought for Alan Midleton.
He is the curator at the British Horological Institute (BHI) museum trust, which has around 4,000 watches and clocks, and is responsible for winding and adjusting all the items on display.
The collection, housed at Upton Hall, near Newark, Nottinghamshire, includes timepieces from the 17th century, a watch once owned by South Pole explorer Captain Scott, and the first speaking clock used by the Post Office, which dates from 1936.
But the job of putting the hour forward for spring is easier than falling back in autumn, Mr Midleton said.
The BHI president said: “Youcan’t turn thehandsof a clock backwards. People always ask me this and the answer is no.
“So you’ve got to go forward 11 hours, and that’s why it takes a lot longer in the autumn.”
Adjusting the clocks was first suggested in 1907.
Builder William Willett is said to have been dismayed at the number of curtains he saw closed while out riding and put forward ideas for changing the clocks over the summer in a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight.
The idea was debated by the House of Commons, butMr Willett died months before he saw his idea implemented in 1916, during World War I.
Mr Midleton said: “It was introduced 100 years ago as a wartime economy measure but it was proposed many years previously. There was huge opposition until the war came along – then suddenly it seemed to be quite a good idea.”
Mr Midleton said the question of introducing Double British Summer Time– where the clocks are two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in summer and one hour ahead in the winter – is “always arising”.
“Double British Summer Time has been tried before and abandoned; whether we’ll try it again I don’t know.
“It was introduced in World War II and was quickly abandoned afterwards. It was then reintroduced in the early 1970s as an experiment but it failed and there was a great deal of opposition.
“People keep trying to reintroduce it.”
He then added with tongue in cheek: “I wonder ifwecontinue to be amember of the European Union whether we might go on to
“Double British Summer Time has been tried before and abandoned”
European time – in which case the French will finally get their way.”
Founded in 1858, the BHI was based in London, until i t moved to its East Midlands home in 1972.
And every Tuesday, Mr Midleton winds the timepiecesuptokeepthemrunning, a job which takes him two hours.
While Mr Midleton can change the clocks for spring and autumn at his own pace, he sympathises with those who look after public clocks andmay have to stay up late to move the hands at 2am.