Today in 1879, Sandford Fleming changed the way we keep track of timeIn 1876, Sandford Fleming, a Scottish-born Canadian engineer, cartographer and founding member of the Royal Canadian Institute (RCI), missed a train in Ireland because the schedule said p.m. instead of a.m. That missed train helped to change the way we look at time.
Three years later, at an RCI meeting on February 8, 1879, Fleming proposed the adoption of Universal Standard Time, a 24-hour clock that the entire world could use, as it was based on the rotation of the Earth -- not on any particular meridian (one of the imaginary lines running along the planet's surface from the North Pole to the South Pole).
Sandford proposed dividing the world into 24 time zones, each measuring 15 degrees of longitude. All clocks in all zones were set to the same minute -- just an hour off from clocks in neighboring time zones.
At the 1884 International Meridian Conference, England's Royal Greenwich Observatory was chosen as the standard-holder, leading to the worldwide use of Greenwich Mean Time to set local clocks.
In 1964, a new, more accurate timescale based on the atomic clock was internationally adopted -- Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Sometimes, it's good to miss a train.
GET INVOLVED
- Set your clock to the U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock
- Get the Greenwich Mean Time
- Set your clock to the atomic clock
- Let There Be Light (August 19, 2009)
- Getting Closer to the Beginning of Time (May 16, 2009)
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