Abstract
One of the first dialogues about international standards of communication was at an 1884 conference in Washington, DC, convened to discuss reforming time standards and designate an international meridian. The emergence of both telegraph and railroad systems had been important precursors of national time zone systems in North America and Europe, but creation of an international time system required unprecedented cooperation over divergent national interests through expanding networks of scientists. The international time system arose from the pervasive influence of the shipping industry and its innovations in science, especially astronomical innovations in reckoning longitude by chronometers. International time reform faced obstacles from competing national, economic, and cultural interests. The selection of Greenwich Observatory near London as the international meridian showed tacit acceptance among negotiators of a shift to a scientific center of global interests, in spite of resistance from France, which hoped to establish Paris as the international meridian, as well as the metric system as the basis of international exchange.
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