Time Standards of Europe

Abstract

THE era of world time is yet far off, and it is certain that the desirable scheme for a uniform horary standard put forward by the Astronomer-Royal (NATURE, vol. xxxiii. p. 521) will not be realized this century. But though this be so, signs of better times in the reckoning of the hours of the day have recently appeared, and the practical outcome of the Prime Meridian Conference at Washington (NATURE, vol. xxxiii. p. 259) is already of importance. Time is a problem to us all—a problem which has baffled the philosopher, driven the astronomer to devices which closely resemble subterfuges, and harassed the watchmaker beyond all other craftsmen. Much light on the difficult but all-important question is focussed in Mr. Lupton's article in NATURE, vol. xxxix. p. 374; but education will do more than it has yet done when the average man succeeds in understanding what he cannot but believe, that forenoon events in Australia are printed in British newspaper offices before daylight on the day they occur, while morning doings in Hawaii cannot fly fast enough by cable to catch the latest edition of the evening papers. In strict justice the time of no two meridians should be the same; and as a matter of fact, in pre-railway days every town, and every garden large enough to boast a sun-dial, set itself by its own local time. Railways have made the uniformity of time within narrow belts of longitude a necessity, and so largely does the railway affect modern civilized life that railway time soon comes to regulate all affairs. The vexation of frequent changes of time standards is familiar to all who have travelled on the Continent, and for many practical purposes the change which has been quietly progressing for the last few years is a benefit of great value. This change was brought home to the dwellers in Belgium and the Netherlands on May 1, 1892, by the retardation of all the railway clocks by from ten to twenty minutes from local to Greenwich time, an alteration of the time-gauge of two countries far more significant than the conversion to standard gauge of the railways of England.