“Owing to the courtesy of Prof. Upton, the laboratory has now the advantage of a set of time signals.”
―Carl Barus, Report of the Professor of Physics. Annual Report of the President to the Corporation of Brown University, June 18, 1896.
The masonry pier that supports the Ladd Observatory’s main telescope contains two clock vaults. These are very small rooms (4 by 4 feet square inside) that contain precision pendulum timepieces called regulators. The purpose of a clock vault is to provide a vibration-free and temperature-stable environment for exact timekeeping. The main clock vault is located in the entrance foyer on the first floor of the Observatory. The basement level vault has not been used in many years. Professor Winslow Upton calibrated the regulators using observations of stars starting in the 1890s.
The double doors to the vault seal out drafts and have windows through which the regulators can be observed without disturbing the environment inside. The brick walls are two feet thick which provides insulation to prevent fluctuating temperatures which could cause inaccuracy. There are telegraph wires to send time signals from the regulators to other locations around Rhode Island. Starting September 12, 1893 and continuing until as late as 1973 the Observatory also transmitted time signals to City of Providence fire stations. Every day at noon and 8:30 p.m. signals sounded on the fire-alarm bells allowing residents and businesses to set their clocks to the correct time. Public time signaling was a common practice during this era.