# Do you know your bells? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 20, 2010, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845 "2010-06-20T05:11:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/1 "2010-06-20T05:11:21Z")
In the early afternoon you hear ‘ding-ding, ding-ding, ding’. Do you know what time it is? ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/2 "2010-06-20T05:15:59Z")
If I’m outside, and the sun is visible, I can guestimate the approximate time of day. But I can’t tell time by the bells. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/3 "2010-06-20T05:25:17Z")
My dad was in the Marines during WWII and spent a lot of time all over the South Pacific. He taught me to tell time by bells so long ago that I can’t remember when it was… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/4 "2010-06-20T05:54:30Z")
OK, I’m an idiot. My only reference to telling time by bells is when the church bells ring out the hours, on the hour (with progressively greater portions of the Westminster Chimes every 15 minutes.) I assume this is not what the thread is about, as the only skill this requires is counting. What is telling time by bells, in the way the OP is using it? ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/5 "2010-06-20T08:08:58Z")
Ummmm, there are people who can tell the time by bells? Are these people monks? Honestly this is the first I’ve ever heard that such a thing was possible in a secular setting. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/6 "2010-06-20T08:45:41Z")
Both the men’s and women’s campuses of the college I attend have bells. It makes sense since the one has a monastery and the other has a convent but I never bothered to learn time by them because I almost always have my cellphone. In fact, I rarely notice the bells anymore. (Except on the first day of the school year when they ring for ten minutes at 9 in the morning and wake me up. raeg) ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/7 "2010-06-20T09:06:18Z")
Being aware of the Navy bell tradition, but unsure how it worked, I read the Wikipedia article. I suppose I can see the need for some kind of scheme if you’re going to use a bell (or a drum or whatever) to keep time. And I can see why they’d use a bell because of bad weather, going back a couple of hundred years ago. But there’s got to be a simpler system. Was that really the best they could come up with, or is it just stubborn tradition? ---
**Author:** ![Dereknocue67](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Dereknocue67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dereknocue67)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/8 "2010-06-20T09:10:06Z")
If it’s early afternoon and your hear ‘ding-ding, ding-ding, ding’, (5 bells) if it’s a ships clock set to local time, it’s 2:30 p.m. A ships clock rings up to 8 bells adding 1 bell for each half hour and it’s on a 4 hour cycle. Beginning at noon for example, it will ring 8 bells. At 12:30. 1 bell and at 1:00, 2 bells and so on until 4:00 p.m. when it rings 8 bells and the cycle repeats. I seem to remember the reason for the 4 hour cycle was due to men standing a four hour 'watch" while on ship. ---
**Author:** ![Dereknocue67](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Dereknocue67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dereknocue67)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/9 "2010-06-20T09:13:06Z")
If it’s early afternoon and your hear ‘ding-ding, ding-ding, ding’, (5 bells) if it’s a ships clock set to local time, it’s 2:30 p.m. A ships clock rings up to 8 bells adding 1 bell for each half hour and it’s on a 4 hour cycle. Beginning at noon for example, it will ring 8 bells. At 12:30. 1 bell and at 1:00, 2 bells and so on until 4:00 p.m. when it rings 8 bells and the cycle repeats. I seem to remember the reason for the 4 hour cycle was due to men standing a four hour 'watch" while on ship. ---
**Author:** ![Dereknocue67](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Dereknocue67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dereknocue67)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/10 "2010-06-20T10:44:22Z")
Did I think my reply was so nice, I posted it twice? ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/11 "2010-06-20T13:06:02Z")
“Did” I? Yes, and more useful than for time-telling, you could use them to tell who was an asshole and who wasn’t: when the quarterdeck watch fucked them up (as they often did) the non-assholes laughed while the assholes got irate (even though it was the 20th Century, and we all had wristwatches). “Do” I still? Hell no. It’s now the 21st Century, and I have an IPhone ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/12 "2010-06-20T15:57:31Z")
We have a ship’s chronometer in the living room and it chimes the bells for us on a regular basis. ---
**Author:** ![Serenata67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/serenata67/32/10646_2.png) [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/13 "2010-06-20T15:58:51Z")
My parents had an old clock in our house that rang out every 15 minutes… so after quite a few years of that, if you can’t tell time by bells, you’re pretty dense. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/14 "2010-06-20T16:00:07Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > We have a ship’s chronometer in the living room and it chimes the bells for us on a regular basis. I’ve wanted one of those for years and years. I’ll get one eventually, but the prices keep scaring me off. BTW, what kind do you have? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/15 "2010-06-20T17:34:46Z")
I’m vaguely familiar with the concept but I voted no. I knew it is used by the navy and involves a repeated cycle of one to eight bells. And reading Dereknocue67’s post I see I had the details wrong; it thought it was an eight hour cycle not a four hour cycle. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/16 "2010-06-20T18:30:25Z")
As it happens I can tell the time both by ship’s bells (which what the OP’s example seems to refer to - 2 1/2 hours into the current watch) as well as our local district town hall clock (dong dong dong dong dong dong dong ding = 7:15 am; must hurry) ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/17 "2010-06-20T18:39:53Z")
> [@Dereknocue67](#): > > If it’s early afternoon and your hear ‘ding-ding, ding-ding, ding’, (5 bells) if it’s a ships clock set to local time, it’s 2:30 p.m. > > A ships clock rings up to 8 bells adding 1 bell for each half hour and it’s on a 4 hour cycle. Beginning at noon for example, it will ring 8 bells. At 12:30. 1 bell and at 1:00, 2 bells and so on until 4:00 p.m. when it rings 8 bells and the cycle repeats. > > I seem to remember the reason for the 4 hour cycle was due to men standing a four hour 'watch" while on ship. Yes, with the refinement that from 4pm to 8pm was divided into two 2-hour dog-watches, each running only to four bells; that way, a sailor standing one watch on, two off would cycle through all of the watches over three days. (The dog-watches were probably not so-called through being “cur-tailed”.) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/18 "2010-06-20T19:31:52Z")
Without reading the thread, it’s 2:30pm. But if I wake up in the morning and hear bells, it’s 7:20am, because that’s when the carillon in the tower of the Catholic church across the street goes off every morning. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/19 "2010-06-21T06:21:06Z")
Damn! I was all ready to vote yes. I knew it was a four-hour cycle with a bell added every half hour. I knew it started at eight o’clock. But I thought eight o’clock was 1 bell, not 8 bells, so I thought it was only two o’clock in the afternoon. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-your-bells/543845/20 "2010-06-21T06:36:19Z")
If the bells work properly I can tell it, yes. That may require being familiar with the specific bells. My sister in law inherited a house from her father’s family; the house is in a microvillage that makes the ass-end of nowhere look like a metropolis and it needs to be renewed completely before it can be used. Bro has been working on gutting and repairing it. One of his recent purchases was several large kitchen clocks, to be strewn around the house. Turns out that the local church doesn’t follow the normal pattern, where on the hours it plays the four quarters and then the hours. There is a single bell, and it rings once on any quarter, and as many times as the hour it is on the hours. So between 12:15 and 13:45, every time it rings once, meaning that you can be off by one hour and a half if you haven’t kept proper count of the times it’s rung since it rang 12 times… :smack: