(via Samuel Fleming Sets the World’s Clock | Around The Mall)
Fleming’s double-sided watch showed the “Cosmic Time.” Photo courtesy of the American History Museum.
…As the chief engineer of Canada’s Pacific Railroad, Fleming was among the many who were concerned with fixing the irregular system of time zones. Before rail, individual towns and cities kept time based on local noon, or the highest position of the sun. But the development of continental rail systems led to tremendous confusion among engineers, stationmasters, conductors and passengers, says Carlene Stephens, curator at the American History Museum and author of On Time: How America Has Learned to Live by the Clock.
“Fleming’s first idea about reforming railroad time was not to divide areas into time zones, but to put the schedule on a 24-hour clock,” Stephens says. His radical plan created ‘Cosmic Time,” a single tool to be used by the entire world, based not off any one location, but rather a theoretical clock at the center of the earth…
