Sandford Fleming & Time Zones - Stuck Overnight at Bundoran in 1876!

Spot the points of ignorance displayed by a brilliant mathematician and astronomer. 

This comment was returned by Sir George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal (he held this office: 1835-1881), Greenwich, 18 June 1879 ... regarding one of Fleming's papers from 1878-79 which had been forwarded via the Governor General (Marquis of Lorne) to the British government for distribution and comment. 

In particular, look at his suggestion regarding schedules and timekeeping for transcontinental trains in the United States.

A train leaves New York using local solar time. 

Another train leaves San Francisco using local solar time. 

A dispatcher writes a meet order. 

Where will the two trains collide?

This was not Airy's only railway-related error!

Astronomer Royal Airy was consulted by the North British Railway to calculate the wind pressures to be expected on the Tay Bridge. He calculated a maximum wind pressure of 10 pounds per square foot which was much lower than that produced during severe storms. 

In fact, 56 pounds per square foot later became the assumed maximum pressure ... before that value was multiplied by 4 to provide a design margin of safety. 

Myriad miscalculations and errors by many contributors led to the Tay Bridge Disaster on 28 December 1879. It occurred six months after Airy's comments on Fleming's paper (above) .

In spite of this kind of negative feedback, Fleming persisted in his efforts. 

*  *  *

There are a number of postcards on the internet showing an early version of the small Bundoran, Ireland station. It was probably in that building where Sandford Fleming resolved (overnight) to do something about the way time was being reckoned. Everywhere.

Fleming's biographies from 1915 and 2000 both spell the town 'Bandoran' but I've found no evidence anywhere that it was ever spelled that way. Perhaps Fleming misspelled it in his notebook at the time. 

So let's look at a map to better understand the incident which contributed to Fleming's devotion to networking and campaigning ... to establish in the imperial and western world ... a new system of time zones.

This post looks at the details of Fleming's trip, and also excerpts from his first paper on the subject.

from: Sandford Fleming, Empire Builder; Lawrence J Burpee; 1915; Oxford.  archive.org

An image of Fleming (1827-1915) 16 years before his determination to change time.

The author of his (2000) biography stated that Fleming essentially dictated his 1915 biography to the writer.

*  *  *

from: Handy Reference Atlas of the World; JG Bartholomew; 1904; John Walker & Co.

If you find Londonderry at the top of the map, Enniskillen and Bundoran Jct are to its south. If you head for the west coast, you'll find Bundoran. These were the geographical limits of his trip in the story below.

*  *  *

From his 1915 biography, here is the story of his overnight stranding in a small country station.

from: Sandford Fleming, Empire Builder; Lawrence J Burpee; 1915; Oxford.  archive.org

Below is a Bianconi car, also known as a public car. 

from: Charles Bianconi, a biography; 1786-1875; Mrs Morgan O'Connell (his daughter); Chapman & Hall. archive.org

For a former surveyor, and someone who had just travelled 'Ocean to Ocean' in 1872, travelling by public car would not have been a great hardship.

from: Citizen's Atlas of the World; John Bartholomew; 1924; Geographical Institute, Edinburgh.

On the (1924) map above ...

• Londonderry is in the top right corner. 
• Enniskillen (60 miles by rail) is near the centre, bottom. 
• Manor Hamilton (30 miles by public car) is at the bottom, near the west coast and Sligo. 
• Killennumery (8 miles by private carriage) exists only as a cemetery today and is not shown on the map above. It was southeast of Manor Hamilton. 

Almost 50 years later (the publishing date of map above) there was no direct railway connection along the route that Fleming took northbound, Killennumery to Bundoran. 

Bundoran is at the first bit of pink on the west coast. With the low mountains, at least his late-afternoon horse-drawn trip would have been scenic. In some ways it reminds me of the hill topography around Lake Superior.

*  *  *

If Fleming had travelled 18 years later, he would have found a luxury railway hotel at Bundoran in which to ruminate - instead of a small stone station building.

from: Picturesque Donegal; 1908; Great Northern Railway (Ireland).

Opened in 1894, the hotel was designed by the railway company's architect Thomas Drew, and constructed entirely of concrete - instead of wood - to better survive the humid climate. Bundoran was styled as the 'The Brighton of Ireland'. 

The hotel still exists today - nicely-restored and maintained. See: The Great Northern Hotel.

The railway line was originally built as the Enniskillen and Bundoran in 1866. The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) took over and began operating the line in 1876. 

Perhaps the change of management/new listing led to some problem with the printing of the departure times - the corporate takeover happening the same year in which Fleming travelled.

As the bare minimum, in 1876 Fleming had hoped that humans could develop the capacity to use a 24-hour clock rather than the AM/PM 12 hour clock ...

*  *  *

July 1922: Almost nothing has changed! 

from: Bradshaw's Railway Guide; July 1922; Henry Blacklock & Co (reprint)

Above are the mainline trains. 'Weekdays' during this era were Monday-Saturday.

AM and PM are marked as mrn or aft, respectively. In one case I noticed on another page - where an entire schedule was completed during the 'noon hour' - the abbreviation non is used.

The particular listing which Fleming would have used: Bundoran has trains departing for Londonderry (left half of the sheet, read down) 630 mrn, 1125 mrn, and 530 aft. (Generally, trains were 'Up' toward a major city or capital ... or 'Down' from a major city or capital. I assume that Dublin was the important city in this case.)

... We can imagine that Fleming would be quite discouraged, after his 1876 experience, to see that the world still had not learned to write/read his train times as 0630, 1125 and 1730 to avoid confusion and errors. 

*  *  *

Below For the sake of local history, here are the 'all stops locals' between Bundoran Junction and Bundoran with abridged timetables showing only main cities. 

from: Bradshaw's Railway Guide; July 1922; Henry Blacklock & Co (reprint)

screencap from: The Great Northern Railway (Ireland); Edward Patterson; 1962, 2003; Oakwood Press. archive.org

Above: The improved Bundoran station offered a trainshed to protect the affluent Great Northern passengers drawn to the resort. There is a 'Station Road' in Bundoran today but no trace of the railway line or its buildings that I could find.

The station building was located where the library and local council offices now stand. The government of Northern Ireland cut off the sections of railway which crossed the border on 1 October 1957. The station was demolished after this change.

*  *  *

The Railways Lead the Way

As would happen in North America, the railway system of Britain began using standard time ...

Most British railways had adopted Greenwich Mean Time as their standard by 1848. 

As a result, the general public began to follow this standard. 

The Royal Observatory began broadcasting time signals by telegraph in 1852. 

GMT was legally recognized as the standard time for Britain in 1880.

*  *  *

Was Fleming Driven Mad at Bundoran?

Looking at short excerpts from Fleming's first paper on time ...

1876: His first paper is produced and circulated privately among selected colleagues 

... to avoid any in-public pranging of his novel system.

Here is some interesting Canadian history ...

(It's always been about 'you', Toronto!)

To people accustomed to a 'GMT' standard, or UTC, or 'military time' or Zulu time, the model is not hard to imagine. Fleming tries to avoid the appearance of favouritism by not anchoring his prime meridian to Britain at Greenwich. There were 11 or so other prime meridians used by other countries at the time and he was aware that too much nationalism would defeat the whole effort to develop a worldwide standard. 

Fleming's hour hand provides travellers, etc, with a graphic representation of the sun's apparent motion around the earth. So people constantly moving or thinking about different time zones could purchase a 24-hour chronometer which would key to the appropriate time zone. 

Although ... someone would have to engineer that new 24-hour timepiece.

On a few occasions, I attempted to fully understand the table above. There are perhaps some local idiosyncrasies of their historical local British time at the top of the chart? You get the general idea, at least.

Fleming is kind of struggling with a way to graphically portray the concept he is thinking of. As you'll see, his subsequent papers are less concerned about over-engineered physical technology. 

Instead, his ideas find support from other diverse professions which are also experiencing difficulties created by fast, modern worldwide telegraphic and railroad connectedness. 

In contrast, the reckoning of time had never slipped into its sandals and walked away from the high noon shadow on a sundial.

A link to the whole paper at archive.org

Terrestrial Time - A Memoir

Time Zones for Railways in North America

Beyond the free advertising and any conscience-nudging they accomplished, there was probably a reason why small town churches had bells.

Because church services had a schedule, like any other professional workplace, it was important that people arrive on time to make the most efficient use of the professional resources being offered.

After farmers and townspeople had basic literacy, a number of them probably did not have the money to purchase personal timepieces. In many cases, daily activities were scheduled around the available light provided by the sun, and a watchful eye was kept on its position on the busiest of days. Artificial light was another expensive luxury which people might choose to use sparingly.

Today, we are accustomed to having the exact time always on display at the corner of our computer screens or available on our smartphones. We are never without cheap, plentiful artificial light. 

Unlike most of our Canadian ancestors 200 years ago, today, we all routinely travel farther than walking distance from our homes. Whether it was powering factories, generating electricity, pumping a city's water, or providing transportation ... steam power made remarkable changes in how Canadians lived.

While steam power solved problems, it created new ones. 

... Many Canadians vaguely know the 'Canadian Heritage' idea that Sandford Fleming (later knighted in 1897 by Queen Victoria) 'invented time zones'.

Fleming's Project and Its Inspiration

One of the three founders of the Canadian Institute in 1849 was Sandford Fleming (1827-1915). The Institute began as an organization for surveyors, civil engineers and architects working in the Toronto area. Today it is known as the Royal Canadian Institute for Science.

Among his many other projects and interests, Fleming worked on what would eventually become UTC - Coordinated Universal Time. He designed a system of 24 time zones. 

In 1874, the 49-year-old Fleming was stuck overnight at Bundoran, Ireland waiting for a train to Londonderry after a visit to a friend in Sligo. It was necessary for him to coordinate several modes of transport for his trip and he had arrived at Bundoran for a 5:35 PM train - which, due to a printer's error - did not actually depart until 05:35 AM. He could not understand why people still used a 12-hour clock and AM and PM ... the reason for his 12 hours of railway station purgatory. He set out to devise a better system which included the hope that people could master a 24 hour clock. 

Fleming's Method - A World View

Patiently, through the Canadian Institute, and through the Governor General Lord Lorne (Queen Victoria's son-in-law), Fleming advanced his papers for a world-wide system of 24 time zones into the scientific community of the British Empire, and also toward sympathetic scientists and thinkers in continental Europe. I think the first paper I found of his at archive.org on this topic was from 1876.

He was not the first person to come up with the 24 time zone concept. It would take the help of many people to modify, promote and implement a workable system of world time zones, and to overcome the petty political objections of some of the world powers. I think Fleming was successful because of the cooperative and patient approach he took. 

A Prime Meridian is generally assigned Zero Degrees of Longitude. An observatory at one point on the prime meridian serves as the basis for published tables, which predict where certain stars will be seen in the sky, at exact moments in 'local time' at points around the world. The ability to navigate east and west with precision on the featureless oceans was made possible by the development of the concept of 'longitude'. 

Latitude was easier to master earlier in history because the sun's shortest shadow occurs at noon, and the sun's angle above the horizon changes as we travel north or south. 

An advantage Fleming had in advancing his idea was the fact that his empire already had an internationally successful system for worldwide navigation by sea. Much of the world used British navigation charts, which were keyed to the British Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich (near London). The observatory was originally commissioned by King Charles II in 1675.

Having a Good Time on Their Own

Many nations had their own 'prime meridian' observatories, where their respective official times were derived and communicated to support their national activities or empire-wide seafaring operations. The easiest example for us to imagine was the French observatory in Paris. A proud Frenchman of this era would never use British time!

In the Fleming biography Time Lord (Clark Blaise; 2000; Random House), Blaise writes that there were about ten prime meridians used by different countries in the late 1800s.

But Not for Long

The sedate world of wind and sail had been compatible with travellers living life timed by the sun while at sea ... and changing personal timepieces to local time upon reaching port. Ship's Bells were probably the main time-keeping method for normal travellers until fast steamships were developed. Meanwhile, the ship's crew used a chronometer and optical instruments to plot their slow progress on the ocean - using the published charts and tables from Greenwich.

However, the land-based 'wired' telegraph and its undersea cables now communicated between the continents at the speed of light ...

And some railway systems covered thousands of miles. Fast trains could travel a long distance during the course of a day ...

Train passengers and the big American railroads were the first groups to be negatively affected by all of this new high-speed travel, as you'll see below.

*  *  *

This compilation was published in 1953 and I purchased it second hand at some point in history. It was in mint condition when I first read it a couple of months ago. To some extent, as you'd expect, it has a '1950s Cowboys and Indians' popular approach to railroad history, but there are some really good historical pieces as well. 

The excellent account of all the problems of the American railroads and travellers before standard time ... follows on that same yellowed paper farther below.

*  *  *

First, here is a contemporary article (October 1883) which quotes the chief proponent of a US railroad time zone system. William Frederick Allen (1846-1915) was a civil engineer by training and the secretary of the General Time Convention of the American Railroad Association. He had presented his system on 8 April 1883 at their semi-annual meeting in St Louis. 

St Louis was served by many railroads and recognized six official times.

from: American Railroad Journal; George F Swain; Oct 1883; Phenix Publishing, New York. archive.org

Below, is probably a faithful 1889 representation of Allen's system from 1883, as it was approved and implemented by the railroads in the US and in Canada after the October 1883 convention. 

Notice the naming of Intercolonial Time. Being named after a particular railway, we can infer that our friend had some influence over these developments. (In 1862, before he was formally involved in the project ... Fleming had written a 60-page paper and submitted it to the 'Government of Canada': Suggestions on the Inter-Colonial Railway and the construction of a highway and telegraph line between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within British Territory.)

Allen gathered concentrations of railroad activity together to make a zone - to make scheduling and timekeeping easier for operations. The railroad system was not designed to meet the needs of the general population, it was designed to help resolve the timekeeping and scheduling chaos on the railroads.

I have a more recent version of this large atlas with a typically very fragile spine. The original posted image below is actually a photo of the opened atlas with someone holding it in the best position for a photograph. I haven't seen any other images which show what the original Allen system was actually like. This is a great artifact to which to have access! As a bonus, you can see the chart of all of the solar deviations within the new standard time zones - for those who might want to convert back to local natural time from railroad time. 

(If you intend to read the long account, farther below, note that on the chart below, Washington DC Standard Time is 8 minutes faster than solar time. Hint: Page 516)

from: Divisions of Standard Time; George F Cram; 1889; from Newberry Library. archive org 

Allen wanted to solve the American railroads' problems, but he had made one significant change to what might have been expected. The Naval Observatory in Washington DC was established in 1842. Like other existing or aspiring great powers, there was a Washington Prime Meridian - independent from Britain's.

Allen chose to use the Greenwich Prime Meridian as the basis for his system. As the result of this choice, our always present, but as yet unmentioned friend, Sandford Fleming, was able to integrate Allen's system into his design for a worldwide system of time zones - also based on Greenwich.

Here is the interesting account of the conditions which existed before railroad standard time.

end