UNIVERSAL TIME. 797 



compared with that due to the rotation of the earth, which gives us 

 our measure of time. But it is otherwise now, as I will proceed to 

 explain. 



Owing to the rotation of the earth about its axis, the room in which 

 we now are is moving eastward at the rate of about six hundred miles 

 an hour. If we were in an express-train going eastward at a speed of 

 sixty miles an hour (relatively to places on the earth's surface), the 

 velocity of the traveler due to the combined motions would be six 

 hundred and sixty miles an hour, while if the train were going west- 

 ward it would be only five hundred and forty miles. In other words, 

 if local time be kept at the stations, the apparent time occupied in 

 traveling sixty miles eastward would be fifty-four minutes, while in 

 going sixty miles westward it would be sixty-six minutes. Thus the 

 journey from Paris to Berlin would apparently take an hour and a half 

 longer than the return journey, supposing the speed of the train to be 

 the same in both cases. 



In Germany, under the influence of certain astronomers, the sys- 

 tem of local time has been developed to the extent of placing posts 

 along the railways to mark out each minute of difference of time from 

 Berlin. Thus there is an alteration of one minute in time-reckoning 

 for every ten miles eastward or westward, and, even with the low rate 

 of speed of German trains, this can hardly be an unimportant quantity 

 for the engine-drivers and guards, who would find that their watches 

 appeared to lose or gain (by the station-clocks) one minute for every 

 ten miles they have traveled east or west. This would seem to be the 

 reductio ad absurdum of local time. 



In this country the difficulty as to the time-reckoning to be used 

 on railways was readily overcome by the adoption of Greenwich time 

 throughout Great Britain. The railways carried London i. e., Green- 

 wich time all over the country, and thus local time was gradually 

 displaced. The public soon found that it was important to have cor- 

 rect railway-time, and that even in the west of England, where local 

 time is about twenty minutes behind Greenwich time, the discordance 

 between the sun and the railway-clock was of no practical consequence. 

 It is true that for some years both the local and the railway times 

 were shown on village clocks by means of two minute-hands, but the 

 complication of a dual system of reckoning time naturally produced 

 inconvenience, and local time was gradually dropped. Similarly in 

 France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, etc., uniform time has been 

 carried by the railways throughout each country. It is noteworthy 

 that in Sweden the time of the meridian one hour east of Greenwich 

 has been adopted as the standard, and that local time at the extreme 

 east of Sweden differs from the standard by about thirty-six and a half 

 minutes. 



But in countries of great extent in longitude, such as the United 

 States and Russia, the time-question was not so easily settled. It was 



