The tale of timekeepers of Vizagapatam

In 1840, Godey Venkata Jagga Rao, a zamindar and a trained astronomer, builds an observatory on Dolphin’s Nose Hill where time was recorded and announced using time-flags

As hard as it may seem to imagine for the current generation exposed to mobile phones and digital clocks from birth, until two centuries ago, only a few had the luxury of knowing the precise time of the day, and the majority had to wait for the hourly public announcement of time. However, the style of the public announcement is unique to the era, and those who were in their youth during the 70s and 80s must have heard about it from their elders. 

“Nearly two centuries ago, the people of Visakhapatnam had a different way of knowing time. Old records of Visakhapatnam mention that the Army unit at the fort (at Old Town) used to fire a time-gun every day at 9 p.m. to inform the public and all the ships at the port of the correct local time. Later, the time-gun firing location was shifted from the fort to the Dolphin’s Nose Hill,” says Vijjeswarapu Edward Paul, a history chronicler and a member of the Indian National Trust for Art, Culture and Heritage (INTACH).

Godey Venkata Jagga Rao, a local zamindar and a trained astronomer, built an observatory at the Dabagardens area in 1840 to conduct both astronomical and meteorological observations. He established the longitude and latitude of Visakhapatnam from his observations. For many years, the time recorded in the observatory was the local time for Visakhapatnam. He erected a flagstaff on Dolphin’s Nose Hill to provide time signals for the public as well as for the ships to know the correct local time at 9 a.m. every day.

The system adopted was to raise two flags together, one above the other on the flagstaff precisely at 8 a.m., which continued to fly till 9 a.m. They were lowered down precisely at 9 a.m. to indicate the time. After the death of G.V. Jagga Rao in 1856, his son-in-law Ankitham Venkata Narsinga Rao took over the observatory and continued the astronomical and meteorological observations. He continued the hoisting of time-flags, which his father-in-law had started.

The time-gun being fired by the Army on Dolphin’s Nose Hill was discontinued in 1871. At that time, A.V. Narsinga Rao offered to maintain the firing of that time-gun at his own expense to provide the correct time to the public and to the ships at Port. He also constructed a new flagstaff on Dolphin’s Nose in 1886 for hoisting time flags. A public notification was issued by the Government to this effect, which is given hereunder.

Time signals

It is hereby notified for the information of the public that A.V. Nursing Row has erected an expensive and durable flagstaff on the Dolphin’s Nose, and the time signals are now hoisted on it under his orders every day between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. to indicate time.

The flags are hauled down at 9 a.m. with great precision, and it is intended thereby to indicate the precise time of that hour not only for the information of persons whose distance from the Fort renders the report of the 9 p.m. time gun inaudible but also to afford the Shipping in the Roads the means of finding the error of chronometers and to indicate the error of the time gun.

The clocks installed in the observatory, which were periodically corrected according to astronomical observations, kept accurate time. The time-gun and time-flags were regulated according to the observatory’s time.

After the death of A.V. Narsinga Rao in 1892, his wife, the only daughter of G.V. Jagga Rao, continued the time-gun and time-flag for about two years. She is the same lady on whose name the present Mrs. A.V.N. College was established. As wished by her father and her husband, she handed over the Observatory, the Flag Gun, and the Flagstaff on the Dolphin’s Nose Hill to the Government in 1894 with an endowment of ₹3 lakh for permanent maintenance of the institution.

The government managed the observatory and continued the time-gun and time-flag until it closed in about 1898. It appears that the time-gun and time-flag were discontinued after the observatory was closed. Records are not clear as to why the observatory was closed.

“In the olden days, there was also a system of ringing hourly bells in Taluk and Collector’s offices, striking a bell once at 1 O’clock, twice at 2 O’clock.......12 times at 12 O’clock to signify the time of the hour. It is not known when this practice was started in the State. The same system continued up to the mid-1960s in the Visakhapatnam Collector’s office as remembered by some senior citizens,” says Mr. Edward Paul.

“Records show that notifying time in Visakhapatnam passed through different stages like time-guns, time-flags, time-bells and clock towers and people used to look to those for knowing time. All these practices of the olden days may appear very strange to the present generation. But these are all facts of history,” he says.

Published - November 16, 2024 09:25 am IST