4o6 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTHLY. 



years, and bad boon tbe subject of earnest discussion by tbe general 

 time conventions of the railroad officials. The matter was also taken 

 up by Professor Dowd in 1870, and was agitated by the American 

 Metrological Society, which at Abbe's suggestion appointed a special 

 committee on the subject, the American Society of Civil Engineers, 

 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Pro- 

 fessor Abbe, Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, Mr. E. 13. Elliott, and Mr. W. F. 

 Allen were among the earliest, and were at all times the most active 

 and efficient, advocates of a reform in this matter in the United States. 

 The most practicable way to secure a reform seemed to be to induce 

 the railroads of the country, which were shown to be using no less 

 than seventy-five different standards in regulating the movements of 

 their trains, to accept some uniform system. Hitherto it had ap- 

 peared impossible to agree upon any plan which they would recognize 

 as practicable. Some persons advised a uniform standard for the 

 whole country, such as the time of the seventy-fifth meridan (nearly 

 Washington time) or of the ninetieth meridian, while others proposed 

 the " hour difference " plan. Professor Abbe was the chairman of the 

 committee on the subject of the American Metrological Society, and 

 in 1879 presented a report in which the whole question was carefully 

 reviewed. This report embodied a number of resolutions, advising 

 the discontinuance of the use of local times and the adoption instead 

 of the standards of the principal railroads in their respective localities; 

 and suggesting to railroad officers a reduction of their time-standards 

 to one for every hour of longitude. But while the adoption of a few 

 standard meridians was regarded as an improvement, which could be 

 no inconvenience, but would tend to diminish inconveniences already al- 

 most intolerable, the committee could " but look upon it as only a step 

 forward by the community at large toward that absolute uniformity 

 of all time-pieces, that is, we think, already practicable on the part of 

 railroad and telegraph companies." The adoption of an absolute uni- 

 formity of time throughout the whole country was therefore urged 

 upon those companies and all kindred associations, and the time of a 

 meridian six hours west of Greenwich, or the ninetieth meridian, was 

 recommended as such ultimate common standard. The adoption of the 

 reform thus indicated would, the committee believed, materially help 

 toward the adoption of a uniform standard throughout the world. This 

 standard, it was suggested, could most conveniently conform to the 

 meridian one hundred and eighty degrees from Greenwich. Neverthe- 

 less, this question was regarded as one for the distant future, to be con- 

 sidered in some international convention. " This report," says Professor 

 Dowd, in relating the part which he had taken in the movement, " is spe- 

 cially worthy of mention, as it seemed to present the first plan, other 

 than the one forming the subject of this paper, for systematizing the 

 time-standards of the country. Although the report centered upon one 

 time-standard for tbe country — the plan upon which I started and 



