Talk:Noon Gun

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They obviously don't do this for navigation anymore, but it'd be nice to know which noon is signalled. Kwantus 23:10, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

12:00 noon SAST (UTC+2) - noon our time. I hear it every day. Wizzy 08:12, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Note on the external link fix

The external link "Picture of Noon Gun being fired" pointed to http://www.saao.ac.za/~wpk/gallery/pics/noongun1.html - which is a page containing a picture of the gun being loaded. The picture of the gun being fired is at http://www.saao.ac.za/~wpk/gallery/pics/noongun2.html. Since I think latter is the more interesting picture, I've fixed the link to suit the description, rather than the description to suit the link.

Just a head's up. -pinkgothic 10:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Source Noon Gun shooting on the arrival of ships

Shooting the noon gun to signal arrival of new ships: is there a source for this available? - ghoemalive 22:47, 28 October 2007

Marine chronometer time checking

I have my doubts that the cannon was used to check marine chronometers, as stated in the article. Why?

• The custom in the British Empire was to signal local time at 1pm, not 12 noon, as observations had to be made at the observatory at midday to determine local time (i.e. the observatory staff were very busy at 12pm).
• I have a reliable reference that mentions a time ball on Signal Hill being used to relay time from the observatory at 1pm.
• The drop of the time ball could be anticipated (when it was raised), while a single gun report could not (not very condusive setting your chronometer accurately).
• The statements about setting chronometers and watching for the smoke instead of listening for the sound are unreferenced, and therefore probably OR.

I'll therefore be removing the bit about the gun being used for setting chronometers unless someone adds a reliable reference (such as navigational instructions) Socrates2008 (Talk) 12:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

While it does devote two paragraphs to the time-balls in Cape Town, the Seaman's Guide to the Navigation of the Indian Ocean and China Sea, published in 1867, makes no mention of gun signals for time signalling. The book, which would be equivalent to a modern Almanac or Sailing Directions, covers all aspects of navigation in Table Bay, so it appears that the guns were not used for signalling time to shipping. Perhaps they were used as a backup to sight signals in poor visibility, but again, the book makes no mention of that.

A bit of original research: Sound takes three seconds to travel one kilometre. Signal Hill is two kilometres from the dockside (the current-day V&A Waterfront) and 12 kilometres from Robben Island at the north of Table Bay, so a gun signal would take between six and 36 seconds to reach a ship in the bay. The puff of smoke, if artificially augmented and viewed through a good old spy-glass, would give an instantaneous time signal all around the bay. Scartboy (talk) 16:13, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I see a reference here, that mentions :- and since 1806 one was fired daily – initially at sunset, thereafter at 1pm, and finally at noon. and also The main purpose of the Noon Gun was to provide shipping captains with a time signal to set the ships’ chronometers. 200 years ago, ships were not equipped with advanced GPS navigation systems, and fixing their position was not as easy as pressing a button. Captains could fix their latitude by observing the stars, but calculating longitude depended on exact time keeping – and chronometers in the early 1800s were not the precision timepieces of today..

I also find this, with some more opinion .. Wizzy…☎ 16:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Noon gun

The generic, encyclopedic article would discuss the phenomenon of a noon gun. A condensed version of this article will make a good section of that one. Anyone want to make the encyclopedic article on this?--Wetman (talk) 18:57, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Other guns section

I've removed this section again for the following reasons:

• It was completely unreferenced. Other Wikipedia articles do not suffice as references, as these would be self references. Some of the articles linked make no mention of a time gun.
• The article on Cape Town's time gun is not the right place to maintain an exhaustive list of time guns at Wikipedia, particularly as it was getting so long. Perhaps a list article like List of time guns would work if the existing Category:Time guns is not already sufficient?

Socrates2008 (Talk) 14:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

No ″first time in 200 years″ event, but an obvious error...

Quite at the end of the article it tells us:

″On Friday 7 January 2005, both the main gun and backup gun failed to fire owing to a technical difficulty. This was the first time in 200 years that the noon gun had not fired as scheduled.″

And that 200 year fact is obviously wrong; however sadly, my observation is pure original research and my lonely source is a wikipedia-article on the Noon Gun, which - just one sentence earlier - had told me:

″One day in June 1895, the gun fired at 10:30 rather than 12:00 when a spider interfered with the relay used to remotely fire the gun.″

Now some simple, however — as far as I know — yet unpublished, calculations easily demonstrate that from June 1895 to January 2005 it's not even close to 200 years. So i've obviously found an — admittedly quite little — error, but can't back my findings by citation of a reputeable source, while the article keeps misinforming his readers — even backed by citing an error-page ′404 - page not found′ of some South African news site.

Trying to find that old news piece there, got me lucky then, but in an unexpected way. While I didn't succeed in finding that ″first time in 200 years″ article from 2005, I did find a report of another Noon Gun failure in April 2000. So the 2005 event had only been a ″first time in almost 5 years″ thing, which might even be the reason for that other article's disappearance.

So that's the basic facts I've found as a result of stumbling over that little factual mistake, but now I'm absolutely not sure how to best fix the article, as I could think of at least three different options:

• Should just that ″for the first time in 200 years″ sentence, which is definitely wrong be removed?

• Should that mention of the 2005 event be completely removed from the article, if no current source for it could be found, as it's then basically unsourced trivia?

• Or should the report of that 2005 failure be completely removed regardless of finding a current source for it — as it was obviously not that extraordinary an event, that would have mandated for it's inclusion, especially as the article on the ″April 2000 delay″ cites some guy from the South African Astronomical Observatory telling that such problems could easily happen and about lots of different possibilities what could go wrong during the signal's transmission from the observatory to the Noon Gun?

-- 212.95.5.218 (talk) 09:44, 21 December 2017 (UTC)