Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time
The remarkable story of the man who created and then convinced all the
nations of the world to adopt a unified standard for telling time.
Standard Time was one of the crowning achievements of Victorian
progressiveness and one of the few Victorian innovations to have survived
practically unchanged into our era. Few technological inventions have proven
to be both as invisible and as important. Today we take it for granted that
the world is divided into twenty-four time zones, but before Standard Time
was established in 1884, time was an arbitrary measure decided by individual
localities. With the advent of continent-spanning railroads and
transatlantic steamers, the myriad local times became a mind-boggling
obstacle and the rational ordering of time became an urgent priority.
After laboring for years to create a scientific consensus, Sandford Fleming
gathered scientific and political representatives from the world's
twenty-five independent nations in Washington, D.C., for the Prime Meridian
Conference. There, after considerable rancor, delegates agreed to the
Greenwich Prime Meridian, the International Date Line, and a single system
by which the entire world would measure its longitudes and tell the same
time.
In Time Lord, Clark Blaise introduces us to an almost-forgotten figure, who
saw the world as a whole and overcame traditional and national objections to
the rational accounting of time.
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Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time
The remarkable story of the man who created and then convinced all the
nations of the world to adopt a unified standard for telling time.
Standard Time was one of the crowning achievements of Victorian
progressiveness and one of the few Victorian innovations to have survived
practically unchanged into our era. Few technological inventions have proven
to be both as invisible and as important. Today we take it for granted that
the world is divided into twenty-four time zones, but before Standard Time
was established in 1884, time was an arbitrary measure decided by individual
localities. With the advent of continent-spanning railroads and
transatlantic steamers, the myriad local times became a mind-boggling
obstacle and the rational ordering of time became an urgent priority.
After laboring for years to create a scientific consensus, Sandford Fleming
gathered scientific and political representatives from the world's
twenty-five independent nations in Washington, D.C., for the Prime Meridian
Conference. There, after considerable rancor, delegates agreed to the
Greenwich Prime Meridian, the International Date Line, and a single system
by which the entire world would measure its longitudes and tell the same
time.
In Time Lord, Clark Blaise introduces us to an almost-forgotten figure, who
saw the world as a whole and overcame traditional and national objections to
the rational accounting of time.
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Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780756760564 |
---|---|
Publisher: | DIANE Publishing Company |
Publication date: | 10/28/2000 |
Pages: | 246 |
Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d) |
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