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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 558. 



railroads in that city, and the work was con- 

 tinued by Twitchell, Davis, Abbe, Stone and 

 Porter. About 1855 the Dudley Observatory 

 at Albany undertook the control of the time 

 of the New York Central Eailroad, and its 

 work was kept up by Hough, the U. S. Signal 

 Service and Boss. About 186Y the Allegheny 

 Observatory began regulating the time of the 

 railroads centering in Pittsburg, and Wads- 

 worth and Keeler kept up this work of Lang- 

 ley. In Chicago, beginning with 1865, Pro- 

 fessor T. H. Safford regulated the time system 

 from the Chicago Observatory. About 1850 a 

 time ball was established on the U. S. Naval 

 Observatory at Washington, and by 1870 tele- 

 graphic communication had been established 

 between it and some of the government build- 

 ings in ,that city. About 1880 the Yale Col- 

 lege Observatory, under Dr. Leonard Waldo, 

 established a bureau of standard time for the 

 state of Connecticut. 



In all the preceding cases each observatory 

 sent out its own local mean time as the stand- 

 ard for local use, and also gave the railroads 

 whatever standard time they might require for 

 their use. Local standard times were also 

 furnished to the vessels in the ports at Boston, 

 New York, Washington and elsewhere, and 

 the navigators obtained Greenwich time by 

 adding the corresponding difference of longi- 

 tude. At that date no one seems to have 

 thought it practicable to distribute a uniform 

 standard of time for public use. 



In 1870 General A. J. Myer, in organizing 

 the telegraphic service of the Weather Bureau, 

 required that all observations and telegraphy 

 for the tridaily weather maps should be done 

 simultaneously on the time proper to the 

 meridian of Washington, while another set 

 of observations was kept up for climatological 

 purposes on local tirne. In 1871 the simul- 

 taneous work was, by mutual consent, ex- 

 tended to the vessels at sea, and in 1873 to 

 observers of all nations throughout the world; 

 all simultaneous records that were made for 

 the Signal Service and published in the Bul- 

 letin of International Observations were orig- 

 inally made at 7:30 a.m. Washington, or 12:43 

 P.M. Greenwich, standard time. 



About 1878 corresponding simultaneous work 



was ordered to be done on the U. S. naval 

 vessels. In the course of his study of ob- 

 servations of the aurora of April, 1874, Pro- 

 fessor Abbe had occasion to state that much 

 trouble arose from the fact that the numerous 

 correspondents had used such a great variety 

 of standards of time, many of which could 

 not be identified at all ; that the words ' rail- 

 road time,' ' local time,' or ' standard time ' 

 seemed to have no definite meaning, and that 

 when several railroads passed near an observer 

 it was really impossible to ascertain what par- 

 ticular railroad time was adopted by him. 

 In May, 1875, he requested the president of 

 the American Metrological Society, Dr. F. A. 

 P. Barnard (president of Columbia Univer- 

 sity), to consider whether the reform of stand- 

 ard time could not properly engage the atten- 

 tion of that society. The society at once ap- 

 pointed Professor Abbe chairman of a com- 

 mittee to consider that subject, and his reports 

 are published in the proceedings of the society 

 for May, 1879, and subsequent years. The posi- 

 tion was taken that Greenwich standard time 

 and Greenwich longitude should be adopted. 

 But before making the detailed report it 

 seemed necessary to arouse public opinion 

 on the subject, and numerous articles were 

 published by himself and friends in the daily 

 papers, monthly magazines and scientific jour- 

 nals. Eventually the full report of the com- 

 mittee, a pamphlet of twenty-seven pages, was 

 published in May, 1879, in which the existing 

 state of confusion and the beauty of a simple, 

 practical system of standard meridians at even 

 hours east or west of Greenwich were set 

 forth. 



It recommended most positively the sched- 

 ule of standard hour meridians now in use; 

 it also urged that one standard would be still 

 better and equally practicable. The publica- 

 tion of this report brought out the fact that 

 Professor Charles P. Dowd, Mr. Sanford 

 Fleming and Mr. W. F. Allen, secretary of 

 the General Time Convention of Railroad 

 Ofiicials, had also thought along similar lines. 

 It was evident that such a radical change 

 from current practise could best be initiated 

 by the railroad companies as the committee 

 had reported. Accordingly, after a consider- 



