52 UNIVERSAL OR COSMIC TIME. 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF BEE.LIX, ISSl. 



Bemarlcs upon a Normal Time to he. common to the xvlioh earth, and a, Prime 

 Meridian, to be accepted by all nations, by Dr. G. V. Boguslaiuski.* 



(TRANSLATION".) 



During the last decade, the gigantic development of railway and 

 telegraph communication in the United States and the British posses- 

 sions of North America, has in a marked manner caused the necessity 

 to be felt of a common recognized system of Time-reckoning through- 

 out this extensive territory. As a result of this feeling, in the course 

 of this year, two publications have appeared which, with a view to . 

 the solution of this problem, submit projects of some foi'ce not adapt- 

 able to America alone, but which to son^e extent would be acceptable 

 to the whole world, namely : Cleveland Abbe, " Report on Stand- 

 ard Time to the American Metrological Society," and Sandford 

 Fleming, "Papers on Time-Reckoning and the selection of a Prime 

 Meridian to be common to all nations." 



The Director of the Observatory at Pulkova, member of the 

 Academy of Science, St. Petersburg, and our honorary member, Herr 

 Otto Struve, in accordance with a commission of this Academy in the 

 meeting of September, 1880^ has presented a report on both these 

 papers, and on the propositions which they contain for the solution 

 of the general question of a normal Time-reckoning and of a uni- 

 versally observed first meridian, which, in connection with other 

 remarks on the same question, we will allude to. 



The report of Mr. Cleveland Abbe chiefly examines the problem 

 from a local point of view. He sets forth the motives which have 

 jirevailed with the American Metrological Society, to accept a series 

 of resolutions which, from the imperfections in the present system 

 followed in the United States of America, have in view the removal 

 of the inconveniences proceeding from present practice of Time- 

 reckoning, a practice which, so to say by degrees and incidentally, has 

 come into force, Avithout taking any account of the necessities of the 

 travelling public and the management of railways. One resolution 

 only in the dissertation of Cleveland Abbe, is of a more wide-bearing 

 significance, viz., that which recommends to the government and to^the 

 public within the United States to refer the Time exclusively to a 

 meridian 6 hours or 90° west of Greenwich. The Metrological 

 Society thus accepts the principle that it is desirable that in the 

 futui-e a uniform central Time be introdviced for the whole earth, and 

 by this opportunity expresses itself in favour of the meridian 180° 

 from Greenwich as the first meridian. 



N 



* Vei'haiidlungcfi riev Gestllschaft fiir Erdkuiirle, zn Berlin. Hprausjiegeben iiii Anfrragf^ 

 des Vorstandus von Dr. G. V. Bo^'uslawski. IBaud VIII., No. 6 u. 7. Zeitaugen von 9 Juni 

 iiud 2 Juli, ISSl, Berlin. 



