128 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. II. 



REFORMS IN TIME RECKONING. 



By Sandford Fleming, C.M.G., LL.D., M. Inst., C.E., Etc. 

 Honorary Member Canadian Institute. 



(Read 2 1st March, i8gi.) 



It is only within the last fifteen years that special attention has been 

 directed to the unsouud principles, the untenable theories, and the curi- 

 ous old usages which still in many quarters prevail with respect to time, 

 its measurement and notation. In spite of the advance in science in 

 other directions, which makes the incongruities in question the more 

 remarkable, we have remained until now rooted in observances which 

 cannot be defended on any rational or scientific ground. We do not 

 suppress our ridicule at many ancient customs which at the present day 

 appear to us absurd ; nevertheless we remain blind to the fact that some 

 of our practices in the reckoning of time, are not less irrational, and are 

 based on theories which cannot be sustained. 



The three great divisions of time, with which we are most familiar, are 

 the year, the month, and the day : the latter is the smallest measure of 

 time revealed to us in nature, and is dependent upon the diurnal rotation 

 of the earth. Although the subdivision of the day is of extreme 

 antiquity, at one period in history hours were unknown. The word 

 hour is not found in Plato or in Xenophon. It is first met with at the 

 period of the Macedonian rule at Athens. In the early literature of 

 Greece, the Hours (Horai) are mentioned, not as the divisions of 

 the day, but as the goddesses of the Seasons, as maidens of beauty 

 bearing the products of the earth, and attendant upon Venus as she rose 

 from the sea. 



With a primitive people, the crowing of the cock was a means of 

 making known the early dawn ; and the position of the sun in the 

 heavens enabled mankind to estimate the passage of time during the 

 hours of sunlight ; the progress of night was determined by the 

 position of the stars. By such rude means a rough approximation was 

 obtained of known intervals during the passage of night and day. 



The separation of the day into two series each of twelve hours took 

 its origin long before the Christian era. The Arcadians counted the 

 night from sun-set to sun-rise by a subdivision of twelve parts 

 determined by the observed stars or groups of stars which appeared at 



