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.
As we contemplate the general advance in knowledge, we cannot but feel surprised that these ambiguities and anomalies should be found, especially as they have been so long known and felt. In the early conditions of the human race, when existence was free from the complications which civilization has led to; in the days when tribes followed pastoral pursuits and each community was isolated from the other; when commerce was confined to few cities, and intercommunication between distant countries rare and difficult; in those days there was no requirement for a common system of uniform time. No inconvenience was felt in each locality having its own separate and distinct reckoning. But the conditions under which we live are no longer the same. The application of science to the means of locomotion and to the instantaneous transmission of thought and speech have gradually contracted space and annihilated distance. The whole world is drawn into immediate neighborhood and near relationship, and we have now become sensible to inconveniences and to many disturbing influences in our reckoning of time utterly unknown and even unthought of a few generations back. It is also quite manifest that, as civilization advances, such evils must greatly increase rather than be lessened, and that the true remedy lies in changing our traditional usages in respect to the notation of days and hours, whatever shock it may give to old customs and the prejudices engendered by them.
In countries of limited extent, the difficulty is easily grappled with. By general understanding, an arrangement affecting the particular community may be observed, and the false principles which have led to the differences and disagreements can be set aside. In Great Britain the time of the Observatory at Greenwich is adopted for general use. But this involves a departure from the principles by which time is locally determined, and hence, if these principles be not wrong, every clock in the United Kingdom, except those on a line due north and south from Greenwich, must of necessity be in error.
On the continent of North America efforts have recently been made to adjust the difficulty. The steps taken have been in a high degree successful in providing a remedy for the disturbing influences referred to, and, at the same time, they are in harmony with principles, the soundness of which is indisputable.
When we examine into time in the abstract, the conviction is forced upon us that it bears no resemblance to any sort of matter which comes before our senses; it is immaterial, without form, without substance, without spiritual essence. It is neither solid, liquid, nor gaseous. Yet it is capable of measurement with the closest precision. Nevertheless, it may be doubted if anything measurable could be computed on principles more erroneous than those which now prevail with regard to it.
What course do we follow in reckoning time? Our system implies that there are innumerable conceptions designated "time." We speak of solar, astronomical, nautical, and civil time, of apparent and mean time. Moreover, we assign to every individual point around the surface of the earth separate and distinct times in equal variety. The usages inherited by us imply that there is an infinite number of times. Is not all this inconsistent with reason, and at variance with the cardinal truth, that there is one time only?