82 • UinVERSAL OR COSMIC TIME. 



Extract (3) from tlie Protocoh of Session SOtli October, referred to in the 

 foregoing Report, i^age 71. 



Mr, Sandford Fleming, Delegate of Great Britain: — To my mind it is of 

 very great importance that this resolution should be adopted. I have already 

 given generally my views on this question, and therefore I do not intend to 

 trespass on the attention of the Conference beyond saying a very few words. 

 From what I have already ventured to submit, it will be obvious that I hold 

 that all our usages in respect to the reckoning of time are arbitrary. Of one 

 thing there can be no doubt. There is only one, and there can only be one 

 jiow of Time, although our inherited usages have given us a chaotic number of 

 arbitrary reckonings of this one conception . There can be no doubt of another 

 matter ; the progress of civilization requires a simple and more rational system 

 than we now possess. We have, it seems to me, reached a stage when a unifi- 

 cation of the infinite number of time-reckonings is demanded. 



This unification will be, to a large extent, accomplished if the resolution be 

 adopted, and by adopting it, it seems to me to be in the power of the Confer- 

 ence to confer lasting benefits on the world. 



Universal Time will in no way interfere with local time. Each separate 

 community may continiie in the usages of the past in respect to local time, 

 or may accept whatever change the peculiar conditions in each case may call 

 for. But the use of Universal Time will not necessarily involve a change ; it 

 v.'ill rather oe something added to what all now possess, and it will be a boon 

 •j;0 those who a\ ail themselves of it. 



To the ea=!t ot the Prime Meridian all possible local days will be in advance ; 

 to the west al] possible days wiU be behind the Universal Day. 



The Universal Day, as defined by the resolution, will at once be the mean 

 of all possible local days, and the standard to which they will all be related 

 by a certain known, interval, that interval being determined by the longitude. 



In my judgment, the resolution is an exceedingly proper one, and the Con- 

 ference will, act, wisely in passing it. 



