Lyttelton time ball station

Lyttelton time ball station

Exact time was very important for ships, as it allowed them to check their chronometers and determine longitude. In 1829 the first time ball came into use at Portsmouth in England. Visible to ships in the port, the ball would be dropped at a regular time every day. It became a common feature of ports around the world. The time ball station at the port of Lyttelton, near Christchurch, was built in 1876. It had an astronomical clock from Edward Dent & Co., who made the mechanism for London’s Big Ben. The time ball mechanism was 15 metres high, and the ball, which weighed over 100 kilograms, was dropped every day at 1 p.m. By 1918, when exact time was increasingly supplied by radio, the ball was dropped only twice weekly at 3.30 p.m. In 1934 the service ceased.