June 23, 1892] 



NA TURE 



175 



when the average man succeeds in understanding what he 

 <:annot but believe, that forenoon events in Australia are 

 printed in British newspaper offices before daylight on 

 the day they occur, while morning doings in Hawaii 

 cannot fly fast enough by cable to catch the latest edition 

 of the evening papers. In strict justice the time of 

 no two meridians should be the same ; and as a matter 

 of fact, in pre-railway days every town, and every garden 

 large enough to boast a sun-dial, set itself by its own 

 local time. Railways have made the uniformity of time 

 within narrow belts of longitude a necessity, and so 

 largely does the railway affect modern civilized life that 

 railway time soon comes to regulate all affairs. The 

 vexation of frequent changes of time standards is familiar 

 to all who have travelled on the Continent, and for many 

 practical purposes the change which has been quietly 

 progressing for the last few years is a benefit of great 

 value. This change was brought home to the dwellers 

 in Belgium and the Netherlands on May i, 1892, by the 

 retardation of all the railway clocks by from ten to 

 twenty minutes from local to Greenwich time, an altera- 

 tion of the time-gauge of two countries far more significant 

 than the conversion to standard gauge of the railways of 

 England. 



At the Poles, where all meridians converge, there can 

 be no natural standard time, for it is every hour of the 

 day at once ; but the regulation of time at these singular 

 points has not yet become a burning question. Were 

 the system of time-reckoning recommended by the Prime 

 Meridian Conference carried out in its entirety, the 

 minutes indicated on all well-regulated clock-dials 

 throughout the world would be the same at a given in- 

 stant, but the hours would differ at each 15^ of longitude 

 by steps of one, twenty-four standards encircling the globe. 

 Thus, for example, at 25 minutes past nooii of the prime 

 (or rather the zero) meridian, clocks 90° E. would show 25 

 minutes past 6 p.m. (i8h. 25m.) ; those 90° W., 25 minutes 

 past 6 a.m. (6h. 25m.) ; and those at 180^, 25 minutes past 

 midnight. The zero meridian adopted by the Prime Meri- 

 dian Conference is that of Greenwich ; and definite time 

 standards based on hourly intervals from this starting- 

 line have been used since 1883 on the railways of North 

 America. That continent is divided into strips 15° in 

 width, in each of which a separate time standard pre- 

 vails, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay. Atlantic 

 time in the eastern provinces of Canada, and in New- 

 foundland, shows 8 a.m. at Greenwich noon ; Eastern 

 time in the Atlantic States of the Union marks 7 a.m. at 

 the same moment ; while Central, Mountain, and Pacific 

 time indicate respectively 6, 5, and 4 a.m. The meridians 

 which set the clocks across America are those of 60°, 75°, 

 90^, 105^, and 120° W. 



The conditions in Europe are more complicated than 

 in America. Each small closely-peopled country, with its 

 national Observatory, naturally tends to adopt throughout 

 its particular national time, although even this is still a 

 desideratum in some. In the difficult subdivisions of 

 Imperial Germany especially, the number of independent 

 and unrelated standards was a grievous obstacle to the 

 interpretation of through railway time-tables. 



The British Islands, lying at the extreme west of Europe, 

 should logically keep time of the zero meridian, which 

 intersects Greenwich Observatory ; while the Russian 

 Empire (in Europe at least) was by its system of central 

 government and State control of railways equally com- 

 mitted to the time of St. Petersburg. But Pulkova 

 Observatory lies two hours east of Greenwich plus one 

 minute and a quarter, and the alteration required is so 

 small that it may be said already to constitute East 

 European time, two hours in advance of Greenwich, or 

 the standard time of West Europe. The meridian of 

 15° E., running through Norway, Sweden, Germany, 

 Austria, and Italy, corresponds to Central European time, 

 one hour in advance of that of Greenwich, and if national 



NO. I 182. VOL. 46] 



prejudices and local inertia were overcome, the time of 

 Europe would be placed on a very simple footing by its 

 adoption. The railways of Austria- Hungary have used 

 Central European time on this system since October i, 

 1891. More than fifty towns in the monarchy have since 

 then regulated their clocks to correspond, Vienna being 

 the only conspicuous exception, where local time is used 

 for local purposes. Servian time-tables have been 

 assimilated to those of Central Europe, and Bulgarian to 

 Eastern Europe ; while Turkey, pulled two ways, yields 

 on both sides, following Central European time on the 

 Salonika railway and Eastern European time on the 

 Constantinople line. 



In Sweden railway time has been that of Central 

 Europe (15° E.) since 1879, and in South Germany the 

 change to the same standard took place on April i, 1892, 

 a fact of much greater importance, because a feat very 

 difficult to accomplish. The four standards of Bavaria, 

 Wiirtemberg, Baden, and Alsace-Lorraine were previously 

 in use concurrently, and the change involved retarding 

 the nominal hours of all trains from 14 minutes in the 

 case of Bavaria to 34 minutes in that of the Reichsland. 

 Luxemburg came into harmony with the rest of Central 

 Europe at the same date, with the loss of 36 minutes. 



By a decision of the Federal Council in May last, mean 

 solar time of the 15th meridian will become standard time 

 for the whole German Empire on April i, 1893, when it 

 exclusively will be employed for railway, telegraph, and 

 all State purposes. Already several places in North 

 Germany have adopted the new time, and it can only be 

 a matter of a few years for the simpler uniform system to 

 acquire a footing for all the purposes of private life. 



The number of European time standards is stated by 

 Dr. Busschere ^ to have been 24 on January i, 1891, 

 and by the end of 1892 it will only be 13. Of these, three 

 are meridional standards, while ten are the times of 

 capitals, viz : Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, Berne, 

 Bucharest, Athens, Copenhagen, Berlin, and St. Peters- 

 burg, but the last, as already mentioned, practically 

 belongs to the former category. It now remains only 

 for France, Spain, and Portugal to adopt Western 

 European time, for Denmark, Switzerland, and Italy to 

 accept Central time, and for Greece and Rumania to 

 join the other Balkan States in using Central or Eastern 

 time, and the change will be complete. 



Strangely enough, although foreign writers tacitly 

 assume that the British Islands are at one in their time 

 standard, there exists in the United Kingdom a diversity 

 as illogical as that which formerly reigned in the States 

 of Southern Germany. While Great Britain and the 

 small island groups associated with it keep the time of 

 the initial meridian, now extended to Belgium and Holland 

 on the east, Ireland is regulated by Dublin time. Thus 

 it happens that when the post-office clock in Stomoway 

 (6° 15' W.) shows noon, that in Donaghadee (5° 30' W.) 

 only marks iih. 35m. 



As long ago as 1888, Japan adopted for its standard 

 time that of the ninth hour interval from Greenwich 

 ( 1 35° E.), so that the clocks which regulate the movements 

 of the Japanese are set nine hours in advance of ours. 



India, Australia, and Cape Colony remain independent 

 in their time relations, although so simple a readjustment 

 as is required might form a graceful concession to the spirit 

 of federation without sacrifice of local dignity or utility. 



There is no authentic publication known to us which 

 sets forth the time standards actually employed in the 

 chief towns of the world, but fallacious information on 

 the subject is to be found in many atlases and clock- 

 face diagrams. Even so eminently practical a work as 

 '' Bradshaw's Railway Guide" contains month after 

 month a map graduated on the margin to show the 

 difference of time between Greenwich and the rest of 



' Bulletin of the Royal Belgian Geographical Society, 1892, No. 2, p. 196. 

 From this paper many of the statements given above have been derived. 



