LONGITUDE AND TIME-RECKONING. 145 



witli the notation of time, and the accurate reckoning of chronological 

 dates in every country on the surface of the earth. 



The advantages to be derived, with the complications and confusion 

 to be avoided, have been elsewhere set forth. Suffice it to say here, 

 the object to be attained is the establishment of a more accurate and 

 more convenient system of time-reckoning than now obtains. It 

 is not proposed to interfere in the least with the local divisions— 

 the weeks and the days of the week. The week is an arbitrary 

 division, but it has been repognized by man from remote antiquity, 

 and it is a period recorded in the earliest teachings of religion and 

 history. 



Amongst the many changes which were violently enforced by the 

 French Revolution, there was perhaps none that more shocked public 

 sentiment than the alteration of the ancient calendar by the substi- 

 tution of a ten-day period for a seven -day period. The week, as well 

 as the week day, has become an integral part of our civilization, and 

 we must accept both as unalterable. As regards the earth as a 

 whole, both are governed by local and superficial phenomena occur- 

 ring in perpetual succession around the circumference of the sphere ; 

 yet this is no barrier to the establishment of a mode of scientific 

 reckoning determined in harmony with them, and cosmopolitan in its 

 character. The aim is to introduce a scheme whereby years and 

 months, hours, minutes and seconds, at all the meridians of the globe, 

 shall be pi'actically as well as theoretically concurrent ; for the divi- 

 sion will be based on the one unit measure, an established period in 

 absolute time. However variable may be the ordinary weeks and 

 week days as they occur in different localities around the globe, the 

 effort is to secure to mankind, by a simple uniform system of uni- 

 versal application, the means of truly notating dates, and recording 

 events as they transpire. 



To accomplish this end, the first requisite is that each revolution 

 of the globe on its axis be defined by a line of demarcation on the 

 earth's surface acceptable to all nations. The interval of time be- 

 tween two consecutive passages of the sun over this line would denote 

 the unit measure. By whatever name they may be known, the 

 number of these units, from the commencement of a month or of a 

 year, would indicate any particular date, common to all. The unit 

 measure would be divided into twenty-four. These divisions repre- 



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