INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1874. X xv 



measured, and that on the other hand, by continual regular 

 daily practice in observing artificial transits, astronomers may 

 easily maintain remarkably regular habits of observation, 

 such as it has hitherto been extremely rare to find. 



The dissemination of standard time throughout the country 

 by means of the telegraph has continued to attract more and 

 more attention, and it is to be hoped that the day is not far 

 distant when a uniform (Washington ?) time may be adopted 

 by all classes of the community, as has for some years been 

 the case in Great Britain. The great advantages that will 

 flow from such uniformity are already beginning to be felt 

 in the various boards of trade and merchants' exchanges, as 

 they have long been felt by all who make frequent use of the 

 telegraph and railroad ; it is probable that the rest of the 

 country will speedily follow in the lead of any state or city 

 that would declare itself in favor of a legal uniform standard 

 time throughout the whole country. At the present moment 

 the railroads from New York to Chicago are supplied with 

 Philadelphia time from the Pittsburgh Observatory, the State 

 of New York is supplied with New York time by the Albany 

 Observatory, New England uses Boston time as given by the 

 Cambridge Observatory, the states south of Pennsylvania 

 and many buildings in Washington receive the time from the 

 observatory in that city. At all these places the clocks con- 

 structed by Mr. Hamblett, of Boston, are used with perfect 

 satisfaction, and it would be an easy matter to make them all 

 beat to Washington time, without introducing any compe- 

 tition between governmental and individual enterprise, and 

 without altering the present arrangements in accordance 

 with which the clocks are regulated from the centres of their 

 respective districts. 



The Sun. In reference to the sun, Langley, of Pittsburgh, 

 announces that the solar spots are colder than the adjacent 

 photosphere; he has also published remarkably fine drawings 

 of the solar spots, and concludes that we must greatly in- 

 crease our received estimates of the intensity of the action 

 that takes place on the sun's surface. 



Professor Holden has confirmed the results obtained by 

 Yv'agner as to the existence of an apparent variation in the 

 diameter of the sun depending on the condition of the earth's 

 atmosphere, and subsequently, in connection with Professor 



