1881 - Sandford Fleming Rides in a Gondola

According to Pierre Berton, Sandford Fleming was accompanied by his daughter on his 1881 trip to Venice and they were riding gondolas along the Venetian canals. Although no photos exist of those events, please accept this facsimile from the same period in history. 

from: Gondola Days; F Hopkinson Smith; 1902; Charles Scribners & Sons. archive.org

As this post deals mainly with the paper Fleming presented in Venice, 

here are a couple of Fleming artifacts to help us imagine what he was like.

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

Fleming at age 18.

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Men of Canada or Success by Example; William Cochrane; 1895; Bradley, Garretson & Co. archive.org

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1881 - International Geographical Conference, Venice

With Fleming now paid-off from his Canadian Pacific work ... he devoted more time to his effective networking and strengths of persuasion ... in the furtherance of his mission to gain support for a worldwide system of time reckoning. As you'll see, he worked with diverse professions whose work would be made more effective with the implementation of time zones. 

Metrology is the science of measurement ... as opposed to meteorology. Both disciplines will appear together below. Having said that, Cleveland Abbe was a meteorologist working in the US who provided valuable advice and support for Fleming's efforts in Washington. 

As you can imagine, when Abbe was receiving weather observations from scattered centres across the US by telegraph, he needed some standard of time to accurately draw maps of isotherms and isobars. 

Imagine the current conditions back then: Some weather reporting stations used local solar time, some used the exact time used by the railroads. But ... US railroad time was often keyed to the particular railroad's distant 'head office' city's time. Many cities had central railway stations displaying standard clocks from these converging railways - each showing a different time. 

Without a common standard for local time at these distant telegraph reporting stations, (or even knowing which 'time' that day's observer had on their personal pocket watch) it was impossible to create accurate forecasts.

Fleming starts off by explaining how the various prime meridians (then in use) were significant to the national users when they were first established.

Greenwich was used the most because global navigation charts produced by Britain were used by the majority of world shipping (72% by tonnage). 

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He mentions the instant worldwide communication brought about by the cable-linked global telegraph system. And he points out that every minute around the globe, there's a new meridian created where the sun stands directly overhead. 

Again, most 'westernized' cities were using their local solar noon for time reckoning.

In Fleming's world, there were also different civilizations which had their own timekeeping traditions.

In other writings, he gave examples of societies which start their 'days' at different times of the day. 

He explains that our 'civil day' spans 12 hours on each side of noon.

... However, some societies started their day at sunrise. China divided the day into 2-hour divisions. Japan divided the day into noon, sunset, midnight, sunrise. 

Western astronomers of that era would have preferred a 24-hour day beginning at noon - so a single session of overnight observations would not bear two dates -  one date before midnight and another date after midnight. (My spouse advises me this standard is still in place for her observation-reporting of variable stars - the reporting date for any part of the night is that of the previous noon.) 

Seafaring navigators also had this preference - to simplify their nightly comparisons of the night sky with their navigation tables which predicted where celestial bodies would be seen in 'local time' as they sailed the featureless oceans. 

Fortunately for a worldwide system, whatever their society's particular method for identifying 'the day', all societies share the 24 hour period of the earth's rotation. 

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Fleming: 

Again, it's the new railway and telegraph systems which force us to confront these new effects!

... By the way ... did I ever tell you about the time I was once stuck overnight at Bundoran?

If you read my previous post about the adoption of US/Canada time zones for railroads in 1883 ... this paper, presented at Venice in 1881, was published two full years before that standardization was adopted and implemented. No doubt, Fleming's papers and networking influenced the general trend toward creating that continental system as well. 

... However, Fleming is usually not mentioned as 'an influencer' of standard time in American-based accounts of US railroad standard time zones. For example, the previously posted book account, or the 100th anniversary article of railway standard time in Trains.

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Fleming:

By the way: I hate AM and PM ... you know ... from Bundoran.

The railways and the public deserve a better system!

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Fleming presented a 20-point proposition in his Venice paper, listing practical characteristics of a time reckoning system which could be implemented in North America. It has the essential elements of the system of 24 time zones we are familiar with today. His original term for UTC or GMT or Zulu time was 'Cosmopolitan Time', later 'Cosmic Time' but the principle was the same. 

Fleming preferred letters, rather than names (eg. 'Eastern' time zone) to identify his time zones. To the yet-unchosen prime meridian, he assigned Z for zero, longitude, and 'Zulu time' (using the format 00:01 Z) is probably an enduring artifact of his thought on this matter.

... Fleming was well aware that there were other prime meridians drawn through nationally-significant points. He expected that strongly promoting Greenwich (as a citizen of the British Empire) for the 'world prime meridian' might provoke a reactive international rejection of everything he was working so hard to achieve.

Of course, he was a secret supporter of Greenwich. 

At that time, these were the observatories/locations where national or imperial time was set. 

• Royal Observatory Greenwich, London (UK)
• Paris Observatory (France) 
• Old Naval Observatory, Washington DC (USA) 
• Pulkova, Saint Petersburg (Russia) 
• San Fernando, Madrid (Spain) 
• Lisbon Observatory (Portugal) 
• Stockholm Observatory (Sweden), 
• Oslo Observatory, Christiana (Norway), 
• Monte Mario, Rome (Italy), 
• Imperial Observatory, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). 

As mentioned previously, a Prime Meridian is needed as 'Longitude Zero At Noon' so the sun's movement around the earth is deemed to start at some definite point each day.

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If you need to save your brain ... skip this section ... 

However, Fleming's 9th point (of the 20 in his original 1881 paper for Venice) presents a brain-twister for us today. He proposed that Cosmopolitan Time (the planet's time, the standard to be used by worldwide telegraphy, astronomy, navigation, science ... and today, the military) would be the time between two passages of the sun over the prime meridian. 

So, taking our familiar example of today's Greenwich or UTC time or 'military time', 'the day' would start at 1200hr Z and end at 1200hr Z. 

The solution was obvious, Fleming's 9th point ... Fleming's 'anti-prime meridian' could be used! In the middle of the Pacific Ocean - on the opposite side of the earth from Greenwich - would be where the prime meridian would be located and the Zulu day would be calculated from 12hr to 12hr in the middle of the ocean. This would solve anticipated irreconcilable international resistance to using Greenwich, and a proper set of time zones could be set up. 

This would require an observatory somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, which would still be on some country's territory. But the new miracle of instantaneous telegraphy could supply the time signal to the whole globe when the sun was overhead in the Pacific Ocean. It would ensure that navigation charts could still be drawn up based on the Greenwich meridian, but it was 'impartial' because it would not give London the honour of hosting the Prime Meridian.  

* 

Today, of course, the prime meridian of UTC (with the sun theoretically overhead at 1200hr Z) defines when the date changes at night at the zigzag International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean - generally located at about 180 degrees. You know ... where the first fireworks are set off as New Year's Day advances around the globe.

... And when the sun stands over the International Dateline, London and Europe are changing the date at around midnight (0001 hr Z). 

... It has taken me a couple of weeks, on and off, to make sense of this proposal in the historical and political context of Fleming's period in history.

* end of brain twisting * 

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Getting back to Fleming's 1881 paper for Venice. The version from which I have pulled key sections ... microfilmed by the Canadian government and preserved at archive.org ... is the paper which includes the modifications by the practical, supportive and non-political people and science professionals who attended that conference. This is what they ended up with ...

 Notice here that many of these signatories are practical and influential people 

from within the US government bureaucracy. 

The American navy had a significant interest in establishing a worldwide system to facilitate the operations of their fleet. 

Apparently, military civil engineers were quite focused and to the point in this and subsequent deliberations. Greenwich? Fine, let's make it work ... (Whereas, when France was later a voting member of the Washington conference in 1884, they abstained as the Paris Meridian could not die by their hand. National pride would not permit it.)

US President Chester Arthur was essential in inviting the delegates of the 'civilized nations' to the conclusive Washington deliberations on global time zones in October 1884 at the International Meridian Conference.

As you'll see, when some political delegates from Europe stalled and tried to indicate that they were not empowered to decide on a Prime Meridian, someone at the meeting pointed out that the President's letter specifically indicated that delegates 'would decide'. 

A link to the whole paper read in Venice in 1881 at archive.org

The Adoption of a Prime Meridian to Be Common to All Nations, 1881

To foreshadow the subsequent developments ... after the Venice conference, the next International Geographical Congress would be in Rome in 1883, with the ultimate decision being made for the westernized nations at the Washington DC, International Meridian Conference in 1884.

As I said, Cleveland Abbe, the meteorologist, was a great supporter of Fleming and his work ... After the Venice Congress was over, Fleming continued to work at this project. 

"Fleming, following Abbe's advice, immediately set to work with personal memos and speeches to American chambers of commerce, railroad conventions, and shipping and insurance companies, as well as with more formal approaches through the governor-general and the British Colonial Office."

passage from: Time Lord; Clark Blaise; 2000; Random House.

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