Literal time ladies used to sell people a look at their watches

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FACT: People used to pay to learn the time

By Rachel Feltman

I recently came across the story of Ruth Belville, known as the “Greenwich Time Lady,” because she literally sold people time. Or at least she sold people the time.

Back in 1675, King Charles II founded the Royal Observatory “in order to the finding out of the longitude of places for perfecting navigation and astronomy.” He asked for a small observatory to be built at the highest point in Greenwich Park. Almost a century later, the royal astronomer published the first Nautical Almanac, which shared the observatory’s findings with seafarers all over the world and allowed them to pinpoint their longitude. That meant people all over were using Greenwich as the starting point from which they measured their longitude. 

Up until the Industrial Revolution, every town had kept its own local time based on the position of the sun, so there was, for example, a 16 minute difference between London and Plymouth. Railways meant it suddenly made a difference if you were 16 minutes off all the time. And telegraphs meant there was an actual way to share what time it was. Greenwich Mean Time wouldn’t become legally mandated until 1880, apparently because folks kept showing up late to court and blaming their local time zone for the discrepancy. 

But accurate clocks weren’t yet common for most people to own. So how did everyone keep up with the newly standardized time? If they lived within sight of the Royal Observatory, they could watch for the “time balls” they dropped to mark the hour (and later the clock kept up to date at the observatory’s gates). But others turned to a more… hands-on service. 

Starting in 1836, a former Royal Observatory employee named John Belville charged people an annual fee to use his pocket watch. Once a week, he’d come by and visit them and share the time on his watch—which he kept accurate thanks to his access to the observatory’s chronometers—so they could adjust their own watches accordingly. 

John died in 1856, by which time the gate clock showed the public the time and anyone could get the time via telegraph if they really needed to. But John’s 200 subscribers knew and trusted the pocket watch system, so they asked his widow Maria if she’d take up his mantle. She did so for 36 years before retiring. By the time she left the business, people definitely had other ways of accessing the time. But folks couldn’t give up their trusty time lady, so John and Maria’s daughter Ruth took over. Despite the continued advancement of time-keeping tech—and the naysaying of at least one ruthless hater—she kept up the business until 1940. She was 86 when she retired, and apparently only did so because World War II made it too dangerous for a woman of her age to walk the streets. 

FACT: Bugs have culture, too

By SciAnts

I love thinking about what bugs think about.

New research shows that fruit flies are capable of social learning in ways that resemble what we call culture. In one study, flies developed mating preferences simply by watching other flies make choices—preferring mates with specific colors of dust that had been used to mark them. In another experiment, observer flies that watched others react to predators developed lasting behavioral and physiological changes, including changes to their reproductive systems—despite never encountering the predator themselves. This visually transmitted fear response was strong enough to persist for days. Even exposure to dead members of their own species shortened their lifespan, while exposure to dead relatives from different species had no effect.

These findings suggest that fruit flies not only learn by observation but may also pass on preferences and fears in ways that go beyond simple instinct, hinting at a primitive form of culture.

FACT: Traffic mimes make jams more peaceful in South America

By Jess Boddy 

Road rage can be truly terrifying, and sometimes it feels inescapable in big cities. But what if the answer to the violence and danger that comes with angry drivers was a nonverbal fellow in stripes and white face paint?

Yes… MIMES. Back in Colombia in the 1990s, then-mayor Antanas Mockus replaced 1,800 traffic cops with just 20 mimes, who used silent performance to mock reckless drivers and praise good behavior. They helped cut traffic deaths by 50% within a few years. The program ended in the late ’90s but was so beloved it still lives on today, having inspired similar efforts in other South American countries, including Bolivia’s “traffic zebras.”

Listen to this week’s episode to hear all about how mimes mocked angry drivers successfully, and how it might (or might not) be the answer to road rage here in the United States.

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