Cape Adare Log - Carusophone

The British Antarctic Expedition, also known as the Terra Nova expedition of 1910 - 1913 is best known for the courageous but ultimately ill fated attempt to race to the South Pole. The fate of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his team is well known but many do not realise that scientific investigation and discovery lay at the heart of the British Antarctic Expedition. The meteorological logs and related data and documents and the aurora log from the expedition are all held at the National Meteorological Archive. The team included geologists, biologists, a physicist, a zoologist and a meteorologist. All members of the teams were expected to take a turn at making meteorological observations during all parts of the expedition. A small team called the 'Northern Party' were posted to Cape Adare where they built a hut and overwintered in 1911 - 1912. They took observations throughout the day and the night and to help them wake up to take the night time observations they built an alarm clock. This page from the Cape Adare log shows the alarm clock. It consisted of a gramaphone, the needle of which was attached to a bamboo cane which was in turn attached to a candle using a piece of string. When the candle was lit it would burn through the string at a measured point and when released this would allow the cane to drop the needle onto the gramaphone record and start playing. The record appears to have included music perfomed by the singer Caruso and they called their alarm clock the Carusophone.