International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884.: Protocols of the ProceedingsInternational Meridian Conference (1884 : Washington, D.C.)
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International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884.: Protocols of the Proceedings
International Meridian Conference (1884 : Washington, D.C.)
Prime Meridian -- Congresses; Time -- Systems and standards -- Congresses
The PRESIDENT. The Chair would inquire of the Conference whether the
recommendations and remarks which were sent in print to the Delegates
a few days ago by Mr. SANDFORD FLEMING, the Delegate of Great Britain,
may be entered upon the protocol as presented to-day. Each member was,
it is understood, furnished with a copy of these papers.
Mr. TUPPER, Delegate of Chili. The Delegates of Chili have not
received them.
The PRESIDENT. The Chair will take care that they are sent.
No objection was made to the request of the Delegate of Great Britain,
Mr. SANDFORD FLEMING, who continued as follows:
The adoption of a Prime Meridian, common to all nations, admits of the
establishment of a system of reckoning time equally satisfactory to
our reason and our necessities.
At present we are without such a system. The mode of notation followed
by common usage from time immemorial, whatever its applicability to
limited areas, when extended to a vast continent, with a net-work of
lines of railway and telegraph, has led to confusion and created many
difficulties. Further, it is insufficient for the purposes of
scientific investigation, so marked a feature of modern inquiry.
Taking the globe as a whole, it is not now possible precisely to
define when a year or a month or a week begins. There is no such
interval of time as the commonly defined day everywhere and
invariable. By our accepted definition, a day is local; it is limited
to a single meridian. At some point on the earth's surface one day is
always at its commencement and another always ending. Thus, while the
earth makes one diurnal revolution, we have continually many days in
different stages of progress on our planet.
Necessarily the hours and minutes partake of this normal irregularity.
Clocks, the most perfect in mechanism, disagree if they differ in
longitude. Indeed, if clocks are set to true time, as it is now
designated, they must, at least in theory, vary not only in the same
State or county, but to some extent in the same city.
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