Ruth Belville, the "Greenwich Time Lady" (2022)
eehe.org.uk
eehe.org.uk
> she retired in 1892, at age 81
> So Ruth was forced to move, for the last time to 57 Plough Lane in Beddington. She retired in 1940 and died aged 89
The time synchronization story is carrying another ominous story about elderly working class poverty of the gilded age.
Mother and daughter working until their 80s probably due to necessity, and the daughter being forced out of her home shortly before she died.
Let's not go back.
Just don't support a society where it's a necessity
If you're a man, don't forget your prostate, If a woman, change of life issues and being a second class citizens in most countries of the world.
I have news for you: that job (and situation) didn't exist then, and doesn't exist now. It briefly existed in the few decades following WW2, but we have torn down much of the ideology and social infrastructure that made that possible.
If you're referring to Social Security in the US, it's no more a Ponzi scheme than your home mortgage payment is a Ponzi scheme. In reality it's a progressive tax scheme to prevent senior citizen poverty.
To make Social Security solvent, lift the cap on Social Security taxes. Will the working and middle classes benefit more than the wealthy who will pay more in those taxes?
Yes, and progressive taxation to prevent abject impoverishment of working and middle class seniors is a good thing.
OK. Let's add some things. Free public schools, subsidized public universities, subsidized public vocational colleges, Medicare. All can be funded if we reverse the tens of trillions of wealth that we have channeled upwards with tax cuts for the wealthy and cut taxes for the working class.
(*) yes, ok, so in reality some of them want to go back to 1890 or even earlier, but I'm trying to focus on a more mainstream conservative attitude.
My point was that large numbers of people agreeing on things may not be as difficult as you seem to think.
Now, of course, we also have the interest on all that new debt to worry about.
[EDIT] To be clear, the Democrats are also to blame for carrying on with the tax cuts, sometimes actively, when they had opportunities to end them.
The problem is that real wages for the average person has been going down since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the wealthiest people are making more and more, but that extra money is not going to Social Security due to the cap. Additionally, due to longer lifespans and fewer children, the ratio of working to retired people went up. Productivity is also up, which can easily compensate for the change in workforce, but isn't enough to cover both that and the shift in income to fewer, wealthier people whose contributions are capped.
The net effect is less money going to Social Security. The easy solution is to remove the cap. That's unfair for the wealthy, but is a lot easier than getting fairer and more equitable wages across the entire economy.
You see this a lot in nature, parasites evolve faster than their hosts, that's why they're still around.
This was true, but the COVID period has actually changed that. Real wages are now up for the median wage earner, and for the median hourly earner. Not by a lot, but they are no longer declining as they were in the period from about 1978-2021.
No. Post-WWII America experienced a period of economic tailwinds that will likely never exist again.
Europe and Asia were in shambles after the war - bombed out, destroyed, male populations decimated - just as America was growing to peak industrial strength. America had a population boom, everything was cheap, and everyone was buying American goods. America had everything it needed - cheap resources, cheap land, abundant labor, and a totally captive worldwide market. No country has ever had every single variable flipped in their favor to such an outsized degree.
As we reached the 70's - 90's, we started to outsource. Our labor had become more expensive, but we offset this with cheap imported goods. We were still extremely and unilaterally wealthy.
Post China WTO, the wealth of America has been spent and "averaged out" over dozens of post-industrial economies. The market is so much larger than it was back then, and America doesn't possess hegemonic, unilateral economic power. Moreover, American industrial power has waned. The thing we had going for us - the American knowledge worker and the almighty power of the American consumer - was being met with increasing competition from everywhere.
The industrialization "algorithm" continues on: India, Vietnam, Mexico. Every country that industrializes and leverages cheap labor can grow into a powerhouse in just a single generation.
There are a lot of countries within spitting distance of America, especially if you group them together into blocs. The American consumer economy isn't so unique anymore, and we certainly haven't been producing our own goods for a long time.
So the wealth of the Baby Boomers and their incredible economic tailwinds will not be felt again unless there's some wildly new disruption to the economic order. (AGI and automated manufacturing, maybe?)
The reality is that the American middle class will shrink and people will have to work harder. The American market doesn't have magical superiority anymore.
The UK didn't get bombed nearly to the extent of continental Europe, and it was a mature industrialized society - the first one in fact - yet it also experienced the post WW2 growth. Same for the the bombed-out countries like Germany and France.
> As we reached the 70's - 90's, we started to outsource. Our labor had become more expensive, but we offset this with cheap imported goods. We were still extremely and unilaterally wealthy.
The US GDP didn't stop growing then, but wealth inequality vastly increased up to the present. The growth in inequality is the change, not the growing GDP.
> Post China WTO, the wealth of America has been spent and "averaged out" over dozens of post-industrial economies
Again, US GDP has effectively increased super-linearly since the 90s, even with China in the WTO. The problem is the benefits - even after the cheap consumer goods - have largely been realized by the wealthiest while the working class have been left out to dry. If the US hadn't gutted the working/middle class's jobs, assets and the public infrastructure they depend on during this period, perhaps we wouldn't have the instability we face now.
> So the wealth of the Baby Boomers and their incredible economic tailwinds will not be felt again unless there's some wildly new disruption to the economic order. (AGI and automated manufacturing, maybe?)
Wealth will continue to explode as technology allows ever greater efficiency and exploitation of resources.
> The reality is that the American middle class will shrink and people will have to work harder. The American market doesn't have magical superiority anymore.
Not if they stop fighting each other and instead fight for their piece of the productivity growth.
It's nice if the job is done by choice rather than by necessity. If it's a matter of "work or starve", your outlook on your situation may not be as positive.
Ruth truly did master time.
If something is true for > 90% of population of the world and > 90% of time in human existence I'd think it as part of nature which can't be wished away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzfiF9ccZvQ&list=PLrkYtXgEpu...
I found a NTP stratum 1 source on site that someone had bought and forgotten about and the internet was available. DNS was also broken for IP and IPX/SPX was a bit special. I fixed up DNS and registered some host names and so on. I removed some odd routes in SPX and IP. I put all partitions on the three central office boxes and distributed the rest. I ran an awful lot of dsrepair and watched a lot of dstrace with various flags until the red turned to green. I'd get a partition into a decent state, then drop the replicas and rebuild them from the first one - all lots of fun.
Anyway, it was DNS and NTP (it always is). That isn't the real punchline ...
The company was called First Great Western (1)! I must stress this was not the time sources for their trains and operations equipment which was totally separate and properly managed by qualified professionals. Their general office IT needed a bit of a hand.
So I can lay claim to bringing time to GWR, if you squint hard enough! A few years later I did a similar job for ScotRail, when they too still had Novell office servers. I used FGW's servers as sources - it seemed appropriate 8)
(EDIT to add):
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time - mentions GWR in line 1 and links to all the other related info.
This is a very misleading description. The point closest to the sun would be constantly changing even if the axis of earth's spin was not inclined relative to the sun.
I had the luck (and honor!) to meet a volunteer guide - Stephen - that knew everything about clocks and explained it perfectly.
When you meet him, say hello :-). My kid barely spoke English and Stephen had the patience and virtue to answer everything with a smile.
Best guide I ever met.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Belville
* https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ruth-belville-the-greenwic...
Via a weblog from the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation:
* https://rntfnd.org/2025/03/09/the-greenwich-time-lady-sold-t...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/7GSD3VytQ5cJ5ayR6
It provides a good view of Canary Wharf's skyscrappers today.
I found it initially while looking for the Citation Needed episode from The Technical Difficulties, which is less informed, but quite fun. https://youtu.be/RzfiF9ccZvQ
It would be interesting to know if it was common practice for widows to be denied pension, and if so, for what reason.
This means that the first two probably died.
Edit:
I've checked and indeed his first wife died in 1826 (maybe during childbirth looking at the date), his second in 1851, he married his third wife that same year. Ruth was actually his 7th and last child. It was the 19th century. People didn't "just" divorce and people also tended to die of many deceases and during childbirth.
> Any one or three could make the claim.
Well, no. He could only be married to one at the time of his death (even if the others were still alive) and so only leave one widow behind to make a claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alimony#England
Under traditional English common law, a woman gave up her personal property rights on marriage (see Coverture). Upon separation from marriage, the husband retained the right to the wife's property, but, in exchange, had an ongoing responsibility to support the wife after dissolution of the marriage.[6][7] English law was amended by legislation including the Married Women's Property Act 1870 and Married Women's Property Act 1882 which reformed women's property rights relating to marriage, by, for example, permitting divorced women to regain the property they owned before marriage.[7][26][27][28]
Because a woman entering marriage with a dowry, with property, with capital assets: those would be entrusted to the entire family and so the man, offspring, and heirs would end up with management of whatever resulted, during the marriage, after the divorce, and after his own bodily death
You are quoting laws that are about responsibility to "ex-wives" during the husband's life while the discussion is about widows.
There can only be one widow and widows' pensions did not, and do not, apply to ex-wives. Under common law alimony typically stops at the paying spouse' death, too.
Nowadays the State Governments simply fund, assist, and promote those non-profits, and mental health care, etc., so American taxpayers are not merely paying "church tax" but synagogue/church/mosque/temple/ashram taxes, to support the plurality of faith-based charities who serve the poor and marginalized. And that's why the government itself can be reduced in size and scope as public-private-religious partnerships take up the mantle.
Childhood memory: waiting for the gun to be fired.
The article seemed to wander off a bit at the end. But since this is from Epsom and Ewell ( nowhere near Greenwich) it now makes sense.
Did he stand up and say: "My name is Pond... James Pond"?
> John’s third wife Maria Elizabeth (neé Last)
I suppose it avoids any confusion as to what her last name is.
And her last first name was Elizabeth, and her first first name was Maria.
This is how Vaudeville was born :)
When you came, you said to me as follows: "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: "If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!"
Tale as old as time, really.
This is one of the earliest instances of a Stratum 1 (2?) time server.
> These are high-precision timekeeping devices such as atomic clocks, GNSS (including GPS) or other radio clocks, or a PTP-synchronized clock.[30] They generate a very accurate pulse per second signal that triggers an interrupt and timestamp on a connected computer. Stratum 0 devices are also known as reference clocks. NTP servers cannot advertise themselves as stratum 0. A stratum field set to 0 in NTP packet indicates an unspecified stratum.[5]:21
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol#Clock_st...
Can I interest you in some cockles or mussels?