UNIVERSAL OR COSMIC TIME. as 
greatly aided in bringing about the important change carried into effect 
a yearago. This Society is now directing attention to a reform of 
scarcely less importance, the notation of the hours of the day. At 
the Buffalo convention in June last, this particular question received 
prominent consideration in the address of the President, as well as in 
the report of the special committee.* Since that date a correspondence 
has taken place between the Secretary and the railway managers in 
the United States and Canada. Already replies have been received 
from the representatives of some sixty thousand miles of railway, 
ninety-eight (98) per cent. of whom have given expression to their 
sympathy with the movement, to abandon the old practice of halving 
the day, designating the two sets of twelve hours by the abbreviations 
A.M. and P.M., and are prepared to adopt a simple notation of 1 to 
24 ina single series. The great telegraph interests of the country 
are likewise in full sympathy with it. The President of the Western 
Union Telegraph Company, Dr. Norwin Green, states that their 
telegraphic traffic is equal to the transmission of forty-four million 
inessages a year, and the general adoption of the 24 o'clock system 
(as it has been designated), would be cordially welcomed by telegraph- 
ers. It would reduce materially the risk of errors, and to the com- 
pany over which he presides, he says it would’ save the transmission 
by telegraph of at least 150,000,000 letters annually. 
The branch literature bearing on the two questions of Universal 
Time and the establishment of a Prime Meridian, has been enriched 
by a series of papers which have appeared during the past year in 
the Jnternational Standard, «a magazine published in Cleveland,. 
Ohio. These papers are by the following gentlemen connected with 
* In “ Nature” (London) of November 13th, the following appears :—'‘‘ However long the - 
“use of the ‘a. m.’ and ‘p. m.’ for distinguishing the two halves of the civil day may survive, . 
“it seems probable that the more rational method of counting the hours of the day continu- 
*‘ously from midnight through twenty-four hours to the miduight following, may before long 
“* come into use fora variety of purposes for which it is well adapted, even if it should not yet 
** be generally employed. It seems proper, therefure, to consider in what way ordina:y watches 
“‘and clocks could be best accommodated to such a change in the mode of reckoning. To place 
“ twenty-four hours on one circle round the dial, instead of twelve hours, as at present, seems 
“the most natural change to make; but in addition to a new dial, it would involve also some 
** alteration in construction, since the hour-hand would have to make one revolution onlyin the 
twenty-four hours instead of two. And there would be this further disadvantage, that the 
* hours being more crowded together, the angular motion of the hand in moving through the 
“<“space corresponding to an hour would be less—in fact, one-half of its present amount.” The 
remedy pointed out in “‘ Nature” is extremely simple. 1t is the same as that recommended by 
Committee on Standard Time of the American Society of Civil Engineers, who reported at 
Convention of the Society at Buffalo in June (1884) as follows :—‘‘It is proposed to adapt 
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