Observatory regulators with minute strike were often called Journeyman clocks, presumably on account of their portability. The reason for these clocks striking the minutes was explained by the Astronomer Royal Neville Maskelyne in 1761. After viewing the transit of Venus on St. Helena he wrote: I still continued for some time to make my observations in the upper room, as before. For this purpose I fixed up a little clock there which may be called a journeyman or secondary clock having the pendulum swinging seconds which after being well adjusted would keep time very regularly for several hours. It had only a minute and second hand and struck every minute as the second hand came to sixty, which was very convenient for the counting of seconds, more especially in the observations made with the parallactic telescope, it being improper, on account of the instability of the floor, to get up from one's seat or to alter the position of the body considerably even to catch the second, till these observations were completed.