52 UNIVERSAL OR COSMIC TIME. 
THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF BERLIN, 18S1. 
Remarks upona Normal Time to be common to the whole earth, and a Prime 
Meridian, to be accepted by all nations, by Dr. G. V. Boguslawski.* 
(TRANSLATION.) 
During the last decade, the gigantic development of railway and 
telegraph communication in the United States and the British posses- 
sions of North America, has in a marked manner caused the necessity 
to be felt of a common recognized system of Time-reckoning through- 
out this extensive territory. As a result of this feeling, in the course 
of this year, two publications have appeared which, with a view to 
the solution of this problem, submit projects of some force not adapt- 
able to America alone, but which to some extent would be acceptable 
to the whole world, namely: Cleveland Abbe, ‘‘ Report on Stand- 
ard Time to the American Metrological Society,” and Sandford 
Fleming, ‘Papers on Time-Reckoning and the selection of a Prime 
Meridian to be common to all nations.” 
The Director of the Observatory at Pulkova, member of the 
Academy of Science, St. Petersburg, and our honorary member, Herr 
Otto Strave, in accordance with a commission of this Academy in the 
meeting of September, 1880, has presented a report on both these 
papers, and on the propositions which they contain for the solution 
of the general question of a normal Time-reckoning and of a uni- 
versally observed first meridian, which, in connection with other 
remarks on the same question, we will allude to. 
The report of Mr. Cleveland Abbe chiefly examines the problem 
from a local point of view. He sets forth the motives which have 
prevailed with the American Metrological Society, to accept a series 
of resoiutions which, from the imperfections in the present system 
followed in the United States of America, have in view the removal 
of the inconveniences proceeding from present practice of Time- 
reckoning, a practice which, so to say by degrees and incidentally, has 
come into force, without taking any account of the necessities of the 
travelling public and the management of railways. One resolution 
only in the dissertation of Cleveland Abbe, is of a more wide-bearing 
significance, viz., that which recommends to the government and to the 
public within the United States to refer the Time exclusively to a 
meridian 6 hours or 90° west of Greenwich. The Metrological 
Society thus accepts the principle that it is desirable that in the 
future a uniform central Time be introduced for the whole earth, and 
by this opportunity expresses itself in favour of the meridian 180° 
from Greenwich as the first meridian. 
*Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft fiir Hrdkunde, zu Berlin. ° Herausgegeben im Auftrago 
des Vorstandes von Dr. G, V. Boguslawski. Band VIII, No. Gu. 7. Zeitungen von 9 Juni 
uud 2 Juli, 1881, Berlin. 
