UNIVERSAL TIME. 



799 



Meanwhile, Mr. Sandford Fleming's proposal had been discussed 

 at the Geographical Congress at Venice in 1881, and at a meeting of 

 the Geodetic Association at Rome in 1883. Following on this a spe- 

 cial conference was held at Washington in October, 1884, to fix on a 

 meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and 

 standard of time-reckoning throughout the globe. As the result of 

 the deliberation it was decided to recommend the adoption of the 

 meridian of Greenwich as the zero of longitude, and the Greenwich 

 civil day (commencing at Greenwich midnight and reckoned from 

 to twenty-four hours) as the standard for time-reckoning. In mak- 

 ing this selection the delegates were influenced by the considera- 

 tion that the meridian of Greenwich was already used by an over- 

 whelming majority of sailors of all nations, being adopted for pur- 

 poses of navigation by the United States, Germany, Austria, Italy, 

 etc. Further, the United States had recently adopted Greenwich as 

 the basis of their time-reckoning, and this circumstance in itself indi- 

 cated that this was the only meridian on which the Eastern and West- 

 ern Hemispheres were likely to agree. 



The difficulties in the way of an agreement between the two hemi- 

 spheres may be appreciated by the remarks of the Superintendent of 

 the American Ephemeris on Mr. Sandford Fleming's scheme for uni- 

 versal time (which was subsequently adopted in its essentials at the 

 Washington Conference) : " A capital plan for use during the millen- 

 nium. Too perfect for the present state of humanity. See no more 

 reason for considering Europe in the matter than for considering the 

 inhabitants of the planet Mars. No ; we don't care for other nations, 

 can't help them, and they can't help us." * 



As a means of introducing universal time, it has been proposed by 

 Mr. Sandford Fleming, Mr. W. F. Allen, and others, that standard 

 times, based on meridians differing by an exact number of hours from 

 Greenwich, should be used all over the world. In some cases it may 

 be that a meridian differing by an exact number of half -hours from 

 Greenwich would be more suitable for a country like Ireland, Swit- 

 zerland, Greece, or New Zealand, through the middle of which such a 

 meridian would pass, while one of the hourly meridians would lie alto- 

 gether outside of it. 



The scheme of hourly meridians, though valuable as a step toward 

 uniform time, can only be considered a provisional arrangement, and, 

 though it may work well in countries like England, France, Italy, 

 Austria, Hungary, Sweden, etc., which do not extend over more than 

 one hour of longitude, in the case of such an extensive territory as the 

 United States difficulties arise in the transition from one hour-section 

 to the next which are only less annoying than those formerly expe- 

 rienced, because the number of transitions has been reduced from 

 seventy-five to five, and the change of time has been made so large 



* " Proceedings of the Canadian Institute," Toronto, No. 143, July, 1885. 



