82 UNIVERSAL OR COSMIC TIME. 
Extract (8) from the Protocols of Session 20th October, referred to in the 
foregoing Report, page 71. 
Mr. Sandford Fleming, Delegate of Great Britain: —To my mind it is of 
very great importance that this resolution should be adopted. I have already 
given generally my views on this question, and therefore I do not intend to 
trespass on the attention of the Conference beyond saying a very few words. 
From what I have already ventured to submit, it will be obvious that I hold 
that all our usages in respect to the reckoning of time are arbitrary. Of one 
thing there can be no doubt. There is only one, and there can only be one 
fiow of Time, although our inherited usages have given us a chaotic number of 
arbitrary reckonings of this one conception. There can be no doubt of another 
matter ; the progress of civilization requires a simple and more rational system 
than we now possess. We have, it seems to me, reached a stage when a unifi- 
cation of the infinite number of time-reckonings is demanded. 
This unification will be, to a large extent, accomplished if the resolution be 
adopted, and by adopting it, it seems to me to be in the power of the Confer- 
ence to confer lasting benetits on the world. 
Universal Time will in no way interfere with local time. Each separate 
community may continue in the usages of the past in respect to local time, 
or may accept whatever change the peculiar conditions in each case may call 
for. But she use of Universal Time will not necessarily involve a change ; it 
will rather ve something added to what all now possess, and it will be a boon 
+0 those who avail themselves of it. 
To the east of the Prime Meridian all possible local days will be in advance ; 
to the wes} all possible days will be behind the Universal Day. 
The Universal Day, as defined by the resolution, will at once be the mean 
of all possible local days, and the standard to which they will all be related 
by a certain known interval, that interval being determined by the longitude. 
In my judgment, the resolution is an exceedingly proper one, and the Con- 
ference will act wisely in passing it. 
