374 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[April 20, I J 



hours are called a.m. (ante meridiem) or forenoon ; and 

 the latter are called p.m. (post-meridiem) or afternoon. 

 Ptolemy, the first great astronomer, regarded the day as 

 commencing with the sun's highest position in the 

 heavens, or at noon ; and astronomers still make the 

 astronomical day commence at mid-day, as it is the most 

 convenient for their calculations. Hipparchus reckoned 

 the 24 hours from midnight to midnight without the 

 division into two halves at noon. The ancient Chaldeans 

 chose sunrise for the commencement of the day ; and 

 the Modern Greeks have followed their method. The 

 Italians and Bohemians make sunset the commencement 

 of the day. In these cases of sunrise and sunset the 

 commencement of the day will vary with the seasons, 

 as the countries are not under the equator. From the 

 earliest ages of the Roman Empire, until about 300 B.C., 

 sunrise, sunset, and midday were the only periods of the 

 day that were defined. Midday , was marked by the 

 arrival of the sun between the Rostra and a place called 

 Graecostasis, where Grecian and other ambassadors were 

 accustomed to stand. The Greeks divided each natural 

 day into 12 hours; these were called temporary hours 

 from their unequal length changing according to the 

 seasons of the year. The Jewish day-watches com- 

 menced at our six in the morning, the second at our 

 nine, the third at noon, and the fourth at our three in 

 the afternoon ; and the night-watches at the corre- 

 sponding night hours. 



The Astronomer-Royal (Mr. Christie), in an able 

 address before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 

 directed the attention of business men at home and 

 abroad to the extreme importance of putting a stop to 

 the various ways of determining the day, and of agreeing 

 upon a uniform system. Throughout Great Britain 

 railways (with their Greenwich time) have done much 

 to regulate the time in inland districts, yet it is still a 

 very common thing to find the people adhering to the 

 local time. A clergyman in a Highland Presbytery of 

 Scotland, who had driven from the railway town to do 

 duty in a secluded church twenty miles inland among the 

 hills, would be likely to find a considerable difference in 

 his railway time and the local time. Should he ask the 

 beadle, or church officer, when the service begins, he may 

 be answered, " About twal o'clock, wi' half-an-'oor 'aff or 

 on." In Scotland, most of the country people keep their 

 clocks fast even for local time ; and it is no unusual 

 thing to see them sitting at the railway station half-an-hour 

 before the train is due. Villages have at last found it in- 

 convenient to have two dials on the village clocks, read- 

 ing the Greenwich and local times ; and the railway time 

 has forced possession. " Scotland before Ireland : 

 niwer ! ! " was the irate expression of the Irishman 

 frorri the country who saw in a Belfast watchmaker's 

 window the times marked on dials put beside each 

 other. 



So long as the old stage-coach was the quickest 

 means of transit, travellers were not much put about by 

 the differences of the local time on their journey ; but 

 express trains and express hurry and express work make 

 a uniform system indispensable. In the latitude of 

 London, a relatively fixed point is got by the rotation of 

 the earth, moving eastward at the rate of 600 miles an 

 hour. A passenger in an express train (which relatively 

 moves at the rate of 60 miles) would — if travelling east- 

 ward — be moving at the rate of 660 miles an hour; 

 whereas, if travelling westward, he would be moving at 

 the rate of 540 miles an hour. If local time, were kept 



at the stations, the passenger going east would be under 

 the impression that he had performed the sixty miles in 

 54 minutes, whereas going westward the time would 

 appear to be 6(> minutes. Thus the journey between two- 

 places in the same latitude, 450 miles distant, would 

 apparently take an hour-and-a-half longer the one way 

 than the other. Thus it was proved to be highly advan- 

 tageous to have uniform time in the country. Similarly,, 

 in France, Austria, Sweden, Italy, and other countries, 

 the national railway time has been used throughout each 

 country. But in extensive countries like the United 

 States the difficulties were greater. In the States of 

 Canada the complication of the numerous time standards 

 forced an uniform arrangement. Mr. Sandford Fleming, 

 the Engineer of the Pacific Railway, took up the matter 

 so enthusiastically that he first launched the idea of an 

 universal time for the whole world. In 1879 Mr. Fleming 

 read a remarkably fresh paper on the subject before the 

 Canadian Institute, and proposed that the day should 

 begin in Greenwich at noon, and in a place 180° east or 

 west of Greenwich at midnight. The universal day 

 would thus be the Greenwich astronomical day, instead 

 of the Greenwich civil day, which was then adopted in 

 Britain. 



In 1880 the American Meteorological Society adopted 

 the plan suggested by Professor Pierce five years before. 

 Instead of the 75 diiferent local times then in use at the 

 railway stations in the United States and Canada, five 

 standard times, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 hours respectively later 

 than Greenwich, were proposed ; and, thanks to the 

 exertions of Mr. W. F. Allen, the secretary of the General 

 Railway Time Convention, this system was adopted in 

 1883 by 972 per cent, of the mileage of the American 

 lines. Mr. Fleming's plan was discussed at the Venice 

 Congress in 1881, the Rome Association in 1883, and the 

 Washington Conference in 1884. As the result of these 

 deliberations, the meridian of Greenwich was recom- 

 mended as the zero of longitude, and the Greenwich 

 civil day (beginning at midnight and reckoning from 

 o to 24 hours) was fixed on as the universal day. We are 

 led to expect, therefore, that ere long the uniform time 

 will be adopted over the whole world, it being easy to 

 admit any little difficulties connected with pomts of law. 



Since telegraphic communication is over the length and ' 

 breadth of the land, it has become absolutely imperative 

 to have a uniform standard of time. It looks so absurd 

 for people in the New World to be reading telegrams 

 several hours before the messages were sent away or 

 before the events therein described took place. Tele- 

 graphs take no account of the several uniform standards 

 in the several countries through which they pass. The 

 only question is as to the selection of the universal 

 standard. 



Various names have been suggested for the time which 

 it has been decided by the Conference to recommend for 

 general use. Universal time. Cosmic time. Terrestrial 

 time have all been suggested. Mr. Christie thinks that 

 World time is the best. For our part, we prefer the name 

 first proposed by Mr. Fleming — the Universal Day. The 

 Board of Visitors of Greenwich Observatory have, accord- 

 ing to the Astronomer - Royal, almost unanimously 

 recommended that, following up the resolution of the 

 Washington Conference, the day in the English " Nautical 

 Almanac" should be arranged, from the year 1891, to 

 begin at Greenwich midnight, instead of Greenwich 

 mid-day — in other words, to make the Greenwich civiL 

 day the universal day. 



