522 



NA TURE 



[April I, i! 



experience is that in districts whicli are not within the influence 

 of railways the clocks of neighbouring villages commonly differ 

 by half-an-hoiir or more. The degi-ee of exactitude in the 

 measurement of local time in such cases may be inferred from 

 the circumstance that a minute hand is usually considered un- 

 necessary. I have also found that in rural districts on the 

 Continent arbitrary alterations of h.alf-an-hour fast or slow arc 

 accepted not only without protest but with absolute indifference. 



Even in this country where more importance is attached to 

 accurate time, I have found it a common practice in outlying 

 parts of Wale^ (where Greenwich time is about 20 minutes fast 

 by local time) to keep the clock half-an-hour fast by railway 

 {i.e. Greenwich) time, or about 50 minutes fast by local time. 

 And the farmers appeared to find no difficulty in adapting their 

 hours of labour and times of meals to a clock which at certain 

 times of the year differed more than an hour from the sun. 



There is a further irregularity about the sun's movements which 

 makes him a very unsafe guide in any but tropical countries. He 

 is given to indulging in a much larger amount of sleep in winter 

 than is desirable for human beings who have to work for their 

 living and cannot hibernate as some of the lower animals do. 

 To make up for this he rises at an inconveniently early hour in 

 summer and does not retire to rest till very late at night. Thus 

 it would seem that a clock of steady habits would be better 

 suited to the genius of mankind. 



Persons whose employment requires daylight must necessarily 

 modify their hours of labour according to the season of the year, 

 whilst those who can work by artificial light are practically 

 independent of the vagaries of the sun. Those who work in 

 collieries, factories, or mines, would doubtless be unconscious of 

 a difference of half-an-hour or more between the clock and the 

 sun, whilst agriculturists would practically be unaffected by it, 

 as they cannot have fixed hours of labour in any case. 



Having thus considered the regulating influence of the sun on 

 ordinary life wilhin the limits of a small community, we must 

 now take account of the eflect of business intercourse between 

 different communities separated by distances \ihich m.ay range 

 from a few miles to half the circumference of our globe. So 

 long as the means of communication were slow, the motion of 

 the traveller was insignificant compared with that due to the 

 rotation of the earth, which gives us our measure of time. But 

 it is otherwise now, as I will proceed to explain. 



Owing to the rotation of the earth about its axis, the room in 

 which we now are is moving eastward at the rate of about 600 

 miles an hour. If we were in an express train going eastward 

 at a speed of sixty miles an hour (relatively to places on the 

 earth's surface), the velocity of the traveller due to the combined 

 motions would be 660 miles an hour, whilst if the train were 

 going westward it would be only 540 miles. In other words, if 

 local time be kept at the stations, the apparent time occupied 

 in travelling sixty miles eastward would be 54 minutes, whilst in 

 going sixty miles westward it would be 66 minutes. Thus ihc 

 journey from Paris to Berlin would apparently take an hour and 

 a half longer than the return journey, supposing the speed of the 

 train to be tlie same in both cases. 



In Germany, under the influence of certain astronomers, the 

 system of local lirne has been developed to the extent of placing 

 posts along the railways to mark out each minute of difference 

 of time from Berlin. Thus there is an alteration of one minute 

 in time reckoning for every ten miles eastward or westward, and 

 even wilh the low rate of speed of German trains, this can 

 hardly be an unimportant quantity for the engine-drivers and 

 guards, who have to alter their watches one minute for every 

 ten miles they have travelled east or west. This would seem to 

 be the redtictio ad absurdum of local time. 



In this country the difficulty as to the time reckoning to be 

 used on railways was readily overcome by the adoption of Green- 

 wich time throughout Great Britain. The railways carried 

 London (i.e. Greenwich) time all over the countiy, and thus local 

 time was gradually disp'aced. The public soon found that it 

 was important to have correct railway time, and that even in 

 the west of England, where local time is about 20 minutes 

 behind Greenwich time, the discordance between the sun and 

 the railu ay clock was of no practical consequence. It is true 

 that for some years both the local and the railway times were 

 shown on village clocks by means of two minute-hands, but the 

 complication of a dual system of reckoning time naturally 

 produced inconvenience, .and local time was gradually dropped. 

 Similarly in France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, &c., 

 uniform time has been carried by the railways throughout each 



country. It is noteworthy that in Sweden the time of the 

 meridian one hour east of Greenwich has been adopted as the 

 standard, and that local time at the extreme east of Sweden 

 differs from the standard by about 36J minutes. 



But in countries of great extent in longitude such as the United 

 States and Russia, the tiine-question was not so easily settled. 

 It was in the United States and Canada that the complication of 

 the numerous time standards then in use on the various railways 

 forced attention to the matter. To Mr. Sandford p'leming, the 

 constructor of the Inter-Colonial Railway of Canada and 

 engineer-in-chief of the Pacific Railway, belongs the credit of 

 having originated the idea of a univer-al time to be used all 

 over the world. In 1879 Mr. Fleming set forth his views on 

 time-reckoning in a remarkable j^aper read before the Canadian 

 Institute. In this he proposed the adoption of a universal day, 

 com'nencing at Greenwich mean noon or at midnight of a place 

 on the anti-meridian of Greenwich, i.e., in longitude 180° from 

 Greenwich. The universal day thus proposed would coincide 

 with the Greenwich astronomical day, instead of with the 

 Greenwich civil day which is adopted for general use in this 

 country. 



The American Metrological Society in the following year 

 issued a report recommending that, as a provisional measure, 

 the railways in the United States and Canada should use only 

 five standard times, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 hours respectively 

 later than Greenwich, a suggestion originally made in 1875 by 

 Prof. Benjamin Peirce. This was proposed as an improvement 

 on the then existing state of affairs, when no fewer than seventy- 

 five different local times were in use on the railroads, many of 

 them not differing more than i or 2 minutes. But the com- 

 mittee regarded this merely as a step towards unification, and 

 they urged that eventually one common standard should be used 

 as railroad and telegraph time throughout the North .\merican 

 continent, this national standard being the time of the meridian 

 6 hours west of Greenwich, so that North American time would 

 be exactly 6 hours later than Greeenwich time. 



Thanks to the exertions of Mr. W. F. Allen, Secretary of the 

 General Railway Time Convention, the first great practical step 

 towards the unification of time was taken by the managers of 

 the -American railw,iys on November 18, 18S3, when the five 

 time standards above mentioned were adopted. Mr. Allen 

 stated in October 1884 that these times were already used on 

 97J per cent, of all the miles of railway lines, and that nearly 

 85 per cent of the total number of towns in the United States 

 of over 10,000 inhabitants had adopted them. 



I wish to call particular attention to the breadth of view thus 

 evidenced by the managers of the American railways. By 

 adopting a national meridian as the basis of their time-system, 

 they miglit have rendered impracticable the idea of a universal 

 time to be used by Europe as well as America. But they rose 

 above national jealousies, and decided to have their time- 

 reckoning based on the meridian which was likely to suit 

 the convenience of the greatest number, thus doing their 

 utmost to promote uniformity of time throughout the world by 

 setting an example of the sacrifice of human susceptibilities to 

 general expediency. 



Meanwhile Mr. Sandford Fleming's proposal had been dis- 

 cussed at the Geographical Congress at Venice in 188 1, and at a 

 meeting of the Geodetic Association at Rome in 1883. Follow- 

 ing on this a special Conference was held at Washington in 

 October 1884, to fix on a meridian proper to be employed as 

 a common zero of longitude and st.andard of time-reckoning 

 throughout the globe. As the result of the deliberations it was 

 decided to reconmend the adoption of the meridian of Green- 

 wich as the zero for longitude, and the Greenwich civil day 

 (commencing at Greenwich midnight and reckoned from o to 24 

 hours) as the standard for time reckoning. In making this 

 selection the delegates were influenced by the consideration that 

 the meridian of Greenwich was already used by an overwhelming 

 majority of sailors of all nations, being adopted for purposes of 

 navigation by the United States, Germany, .-Vustria, Italy, &c. 

 Further, the United States had recently adopted Greenwich as 

 the basis of their time-reckoning, and this circumstance in itself 

 indicated that this was the only meridian on which the Eastern 

 and Western Hemispheres were likely to agree. 



The difficulties in the way of an .agreement between the two 

 hemispheres may be appreciated by the remarks of the Superin- 

 tendent of the American Ephemeris on Mr. Sandford Fleming's 

 scheme for universal time (which was subsequently adopted in 

 its essentials at the Washington Conference) : — " A capital plan 



