Career
He was a member of the Birmingham Philosophical Institution (BPI) (Honorary Secretary of the Junior Department in 1841), the Royal Society, and the Birmingham and Midland Institute (BMI).
Shortly after giving lectures on chronology in 1842 he provided an accurate display of local time based on astronomical measurements on a public clock in front of the Philosophical Institution in Cannon Street from which the church clocks were set. It was eventually synchronised to Greenwich Mean Time by electrical telegraph when the railway timetable became important. Later a number of clocks around Birmingham were linked by wire. The clock was transferred to the BMI when the BPI closed down in 1852. In 1883, he gave a clock and bells for the tower of the new Art Gallery, which was constructed in 1885. This clock, nicknamed Big Brum then acted as the town's timepiece, replacing an expensive network of clocks wired around the town.
Read more about this topic: A. Follett Osler
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)