![]() By World War I, improvements in gun technology meant that big-gun battleships could fire at enemy ships at a distance of five miles or more. The lead ship would attempt to maneuver so that, ideally, the following ships could concentrate fire from their big guns on a specific enemy target or targets. The standard practice of the battleship era was for the battleships to enter combat in a line-ahead formation. When the United States joined the war in 1917, the US Navy adopted the concept. Range clocks were invented by the Royal Navy (they called them “concentration dials”) during World War I to help squadrons of battleships aim at the same target. It’s a device called a “range clock,” and you will see it in pictures of battleships from World War I until about the beginning of World War II. A number of visitors to the temporary exhibit “Viva Hoover! The 1928 Goodwill Tour” have asked about one of the large photographs of the battleship USS Maryland - what is that clock-like thing on the mast? ![]()
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