April I, 1886] 



NA TV RE 



523 



for use during the millenium. Too perfect for the present state 

 of humanity. See no more reason for considering Europe in 

 the matter than for considering the inhabitants of the planet 

 Mars. No ; we don't care for other nations, can't help them, 

 and they can't help us." ' 



A^ a means of introducing universal time, it has been pro- 

 posed by Mr. Sandford Fleming, Mr. W. F. Allen, and others, 

 that standard times based on meridians differing by an exact 

 number of hours from Greenwich should be used all over the 

 world. In some cases it may be that a meridian differing by an 

 exact number of half-hours from Greenwich would be more 

 suitable for a country like Ireland, Ss\'itzerland, Greece, or New 

 Zealand, through the middle of which such a meridian would 

 pass, whilst one of the hourly meridians would lie altogether 

 outside of it. 



The scheme of hourly meridians, though valuable as a step 

 towards uniform time, can only be considered a provisional 

 arrangement, and though it may work well in countries like 

 England, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, &c. , which 

 do not extend over more than one hour of longitude, in the case of 

 such an extensive territory as the United States difficulties arise 

 in the transition from one hour-section to the next which are 

 only less annoying than those formerly experienced, because the 

 number of transitions has been reduced from seventy-five to five, 

 and the change of time has been made so large that there is less 

 risk of its being overlooked. The natural inference from this is 

 that one time-reckoning should be ^used throughout the whole 

 country, and thus we are led to look forward to the adoption in 

 the near future of a national standard time, 6 hours slow by 

 Greenwich, for lailways. and telegraphs throughout North 

 America. 



We may then naturally expect that by the same process which 

 we have witnessed in England, France, Italy, Sweden, and 

 other countries, railway time will eventually regulate all the 

 affairs of ordinary life. There may of course be legal difficulties 

 arising from the change of time-reckoning, and probably in the 

 first instance local time would beheld to be the legal time unless 

 otherwise specified. 



It seems certain that v\'hen a single standard of lime has been 

 adopted loy the railways throughout such a large tract of country 

 as North America, where we have a difference of local times 

 exceeding five hours, the transition to universal time will be but 

 a sm.all step. 



But if is when we come to consider the influence of telegraphs 

 on business life, an influence wliich is constantly exercised, and 

 which is year by year increasing, that the necessity for a universal 

 or world time becomes even more apparent. As far as railways 

 are concerned, each country has its own system, which is to a 

 certain extent complete in itself, though even in the case of 

 railways the rapidly increasing inter-communication between 

 diff'erent countries makes the transition in time-reckoning on 

 crossing the frontier more and more inconvenient. Telegraphs, 

 however, take no account of the time kept in the countries 

 through which they pass, and the qu-^stion, as far as they are 

 concerned, resolves itself into the selection of that system of 

 time reckoning which will give least trouble to those who use 

 them. 



For the time which is thus proposed for eventual adoption 

 throughout the world, various names have been suggested. But 

 whether we call it Universal, Cosmic, Terrestrial, or what seems 

 to me best of all. World Tune, I think we may look forward to 

 its adoption for many purposes of life in the near future. 



The question, however, arises as to the starting-point for the 

 universal or world day. Assuming that, as decided by the great 

 majority of the delegates at Washington, it is to be based on 

 the meridian of Greenwich, it has still to be settled whether the 

 world day is to begin at midnight or noon of that meridian. 

 The astronomers at Rome decided by a majority of twenty-two 

 to eight in favour of the day commencing at Greenwich noon, 

 that is, of making the day throughout Europe begin about 

 mid-day. However natural it might be for a body of astronomers 

 to propose that their own peculiar and rather inconvenient time- 

 reckoning should be imposed on the general public, it seems 

 safe to predict that a World Day which commenced in the 

 middle of their busiest hours would not be accepted by business 

 men. In fact, the idea on whicli this proposal was founded was 

 that universal time would be used solely for the internal admin- 

 istrati )n of railways and telegraphs, and that accurate local 

 time must be rigidly adhered to for all other purposes. It was 



Proceedings of ihe Canadi; 



, Toronto, No. 143, July 



conceded, however, that persons who travelled frequently might 

 with advantage use universal time during railway journeys. 

 This attempt to separate the travelling from the stationary 

 public seems to be one that is not likely to meet with success 

 even temporarily, and it is clear that in the future the latter 

 class may be expected to be completely absorbed in the former. 

 Another argument that influenced the meeting at Rome was the 

 supposed use of the astronomical day by sailors. Now it 

 appears that sailors never did use the astronomical day, which 

 begins at the noon fo/lcnuiitg the civil midnight of that date, but 

 the nautical day, which begins at the noon /nvt-n'/Hi,', i.e. twenty- 

 four hours before the astronomical day of the same date, ending 

 when the latter begins. And the nautical day itself has long 

 been given up by English and American sailors, who now use a 

 sort of mongrel time-reckoning, employing civil time in the log- 

 book and for ordinary purposes, whilst, in working up the obser- 

 vations on which the safe navigation of the ship depends, they 

 are obliged to change civil into astronomical reckoning, altering 

 the date where necessary, and interpreting their a.m. and p.m. 

 by the light of nature. It says something for the common-sense 

 of our sailors that they are able to carry out every d.ay without 

 mistake this operation, which is considered so troublesome by 

 some astronomers. 



In this coimection I may mention that the Board of Visitors 

 of Greenwich Observatory have almost unanimously recom- 

 mended that, in accordance with the resolution of the Washington 

 Conference, the day in the English Nautical Almanac should be 

 arranged from the year 1S91 (the earliest practicable date) to 

 begin at Greenwich midnight (so as to agree with civil 

 reckoning, and remove this source of confusion for sailoi's), and 

 that a committee appointed by them have drawn up the details 

 of the changes necessary to give effect to this resolution without 

 causing inconvenience to the mercantile marine. 



The advantage of making the world day coincide with the 

 Greenwich civil day is that the change of date at the coiirmence- 

 ment of a new day falls in the hours of the night throughout 

 Europe, Africa, and Asia, and that it does not occur in the 

 ordinary office hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) in any important 

 counry except New Zealand. In the United States and Canada 

 the change of date would occur after four in the evening, and 

 in Australia before ten in the morning. This arrangement 

 would thus reduce the inconvenience to a minimum, as the 

 part of the world in which the change of d.ate would occur 

 about the middle of the local day is almost entirely water, 

 whilst on the opposite side we have the most populous continents. 



The question for the future seems to be whether it will be 

 found more troublesome to change the hours for labour, sleep, 

 and meals once for all in any particular place, or to be continu- 

 ally changing them in communications from place to place, 

 whether by railway, telegraph, or telephone. When universal or 

 world time is used for railways and telegraphs, it seems not 

 unlikely that the public may find it more convenient to adopt it 

 for all purposes. A business man who daily travels by rail, and 

 constantly receives telegrams from all parts of the world, dated 

 in universal time, would probably find it easier to learn once for 

 all that local noon is represented by lyh. U.T. and midnight 

 by 5h. (as would be the case in the Eastern States of North 

 America), and that his office hours are I5h. to 2ih. U.T. , than 

 to be continually translating the universal time used for his 

 telegrams into local time. 



If this change were to come about, the terms noon and 

 midnight would still preserve their present meaning with refer- 

 ence to local lime, and the position of the sun in the sky, but 

 they would cease to be inseparably associated with 12 o'cl )ck. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



AniiaUn dcr Physik iiiid Chemie, No. 2, 1S86. — On the gal- 

 vanic conductivity of some easily fusible metallic alloys, by C. L. 

 Weber. — On the electric conductivity of double-salts, by E. 

 Klein. — On the galvanic polarisation of lead, by F. Streintzand 

 E. Aulinger. — Experiment to determine the maximum of galvanic 

 polarisation, by A. Foppl. — On the electro-magnetic rotation ef 

 the polarisation of light in iron, by A. Kundt. — Electro-m.agnetic 

 rotation of natural light, by L. Sohncke. — On determination of 

 the capillary constants of liquids, by S. Quincke. — On the 

 relative permeability of different diaphragms and their avail- 

 abiUty as dialytic partitions, by A. Zott. — On the influence of 

 te Jiperature and concentration on the fluidity of liquid mixtures. 



