But, in the inauguration of a scheme affecting so many individuals, it is desirable not to interfere with prevailing customs more than necessary. Such influences as arise from habit are powerful and cannot be ignored. The fact must be recognized that it will be difficult to change immediately the usages to which the mass of men have been accustomed. In daily life we are in the habit of eating, sleeping, and following the routine of our existence at certain periods of the day. We are familiar with the numbers of the hours by which these periods are known, and, doubtless, there will be many who will see little reason in any attempt to alter their nomenclature, especially those who take little note of cause and effect, and who, with difficulty, understand the necessity of a remedy to some marked irregularity which, however generally objectionable, does not bear heavily upon them individually.
For the present, therefore, we must adapt a new system, as best we are able, to the habits of men and women as we find them. Provision for such adaptation is made in the recommendations by which, while local reckoning would be based on the principles laid down, the hours and their numbers need not appreciably vary from those with which we are familiar. Thus, time-reckoning in all ordinary affairs in every locality may be made to harmonize with the general system.
Standard time throughout the United States and Canada has been established in accord with this principle. Its adoption has proved the advantages which may be attained generally by the same means. On all sides these advantages have been widely appreciated, and no change intimately bearing upon common life was ever so unanimously accepted. Certainly, it is an important step towards the establishment of one system of universal time, or, as it is designated in the recommendations, Cosmic time.
The alacrity and unanimity with which the change has been accepted in North America encourages the belief that the introduction of cosmic time in every-day life is not unattainable. The intelligence of the people will not fail to discover, before long, that the adoption of correct principles of time-reckoning will in no way change or seriously affect the habits they have been accustomed to. It will certainly sweep away nothing valuable to them. The sun will rise and set to regulate their social affairs. All classes will soon learn to understand the hour of noon, whatever the number on the dial, whether six, as in Scriptural times, or twelve, or eighteen, or any other number. People will get up and retire to bed, begin and end work, take breakfast and dinner at the same periods of the day as at present, and our social habits and customs will remain without a change, depending, as now, on the daily returning phenomena of light and darkness.
The one alteration will be in the notation of the hours, so as to secure uniformity in every longitude. It is to be expected that this change will at first create some bewilderment, and that it will be somewhat difficult to be understood by the masses. The causes for such a change to many will appear insufficient or fanciful. In a few years, however, this feeling must pass away, and the advantages to be gained will become so manifest that I do not doubt so desirable a reform will eventually commend itself to general favor, and be adopted in all the affairs of life.
Be that as it may, it seems to me highly important that a comprehensive time system should be initiated to facilitate scientific observations, and definitely to establish chronological dates; that it should be designed for general use in connection with railways and telegraphs, and for such other purposes for which it may be found convenient.
The Cosmic day set forth in the recommendations would be the date for the world recognizable by all nations. It would theoretically and practically be the mean of all local days, and the common standard to which all local reckoning would be referable.
With regard to the reckoning of longitude, I submit that longitude and time are so intimately related that they may be expressed by a common notation. Longitude is simply the angle formed by two planes passing through the earth's axis, while time is the period occupied by the earth in rotating through that angle. If we adopt the system of measuring time by the revolution of the earth from a recognized zero, one of these planes—that through the zero—may be considered fixed; the other—that through the meridian of the place—being movable, the longitudinal angle is variable. Obviously the variable angle ought to be measured from the fixed plane as zero, and as the motion of the earth by which the equivalent time of the angle is measured is continuous, the longitude ought to be reckoned continuously in one direction. The direction is determined by the notation of the hour meridians, viz., from east to west.
If longitude be so reckoned and denoted by the terms used in the notation of cosmic time, the time of day everywhere throughout the globe would invariably denote the precise longitude of the place directly under the mean sun. Conversely, at the epoch of mean solar passage at any place, the longitude being known, cosmic time would be one and the same with the longitude of the place.
The advantages of such a system of reckoning and nomenclature, as suggested in the recommendations which I now submit, will be, I think, self-evident.