1886.] m Universal Time. 391 



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

 the Geodetic Association at Eome in 1883. Following on this a 

 special Conference was held at Washington in October 1884, to fix on 

 a meridian proj)er to be employed as a common zero of Jongitude 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 24 hours) as the standard for time-reckoning. In making this 

 selection the delegates were influenced by the consideration that the 

 meridian of Greenwich was already used by an overwhelming majority 

 of sailors of all nations, being adopted for purposes of navigation by 

 the United States, Germany, Austria, Italy, &c. Further, the United 

 States had recently adopted Greenwich as the basis of their time- 

 reckoning, and this circumstance in itself indicated that this was the 

 only meridian on which the Eastern and Western Hemispheres were 

 likely to agree. 



The difficulties in the way of an agreement between the two 

 hemispheres may be appreciated by the remarks of the Superinten- 

 dent of the American Ephemeris on Mr. Sandford Fleming's scheme 

 for universal time (which was subsequently adopted in its essentials 

 at the Washington Conference) : — " A capital plan for use during the 

 millennium. Too perfect for the present state of humanity. See no 

 more reason for considering Europe in the matter than for consider- 

 ing 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, 

 Switzerland, Greece, or New Zealand, through the middle of which 

 such a meridian would pass, whilst one of the hourly meridians would 

 lie altogether outside of it. 



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

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

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

 Austria, Hungary, Sweden, &c., 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 ex- 

 perienced, because the number of transitions has been reduced from 

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

 that there is less risk of its being overlooked. The natural inference 

 from this is that one time-reckoning should be used throughout the 



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



