 The tower was completed at the start of 1888 and was unveiled on 20 January 1888 on Willing's 70th birthday.Local inventor Magnus Volk—responsible for Britain's oldest surviving electric railway, an eccentric sea-based railway line, a pioneering electric car and Brighton's first telephone link—designed a time ball for the clock tower soon after it opened.The hydraulically operated copper sphere moved up and down a metal mast every hour, based on electrical signals transmitted from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.