In [Fig. 32] the broken lines indicate roughly the parts of the United States and Canada in which these several kinds of time are used, and illustrate how irregular are the boundaries of these parts.
Standard time is sent daily into all of the more important telegraph offices of the United States, and serves to regulate watches and clocks, to the almost complete exclusion of local time.
58. To determine the longitude.—With an ordinary watch observe the time of the sun's transit over your local meridian, and correct the observed time for the equation of time by means of the curve in [Fig. 30]. The difference between the corrected time and 12 o'clock will be the correction of your watch referred to local mean solar time. Compare your watch with the time signals in the nearest telegraph office and find its correction referred to standard time. The difference between the two corrections is the difference between your longitude and that of the standard meridian.
N. B.—Don't tamper with the watch by trying to "set it right." No harm will be done if it is wrong, provided you take due account of the correction as indicated above.
If the correction of the watch changed between your observation and the comparison in the telegraph office, what effect would it have upon the longitude determination? How can you avoid this effect?
59. Chronology.—The Century Dictionary defines chronology as "the science of time"—that is, "the method of measuring or computing time by regular divisions or periods according to the revolutions of the sun or moon."
We have already seen that for the measurement of short intervals of time the day and its subdivisions—hours, minutes, seconds—furnish a very complete and convenient system. But for longer periods, extending to hundreds and thousands of days, a larger unit of time is required, and for the most part these longer units have in all ages and among all peoples been based upon astronomical considerations. But to this there is one marked exception. The week is a simple multiple of the day, as the dime is a multiple of the cent, and while it may have had its origin in the changing phases of the moon this is at best doubtful, since it does not follow these with any considerable accuracy. If the still longer units of time—the month and the year—had equally been made to consist of an integral number of days much confusion and misunderstanding might have been avoided, and the annals of ancient times would have presented fewer pitfalls to the historian than is now the case. The month is plainly connected with the motion of the moon among the stars. The year is, of course, based upon the motion of the sun through the heavens and the change of seasons which is thus produced; although, as commonly employed, it is not quite the same as the time required by the earth to make one complete revolution in its orbit. This time of one revolution is called a sidereal year, while, as we have already seen in [Chapter V], the year which measures the course of the seasons is shorter than this on account of the precession of the equinoxes. It is called a tropical year with reference to the circuit which the sun makes from one tropic to the other and back again.
We can readily understand why primitive peoples should adopt as units of time these natural periods, but in so doing they incurred much the same kind of difficulty that we should experience in trying to use both English and American money in the ordinary transactions of life. How many dollars make a pound sterling? How shall we make change with English shillings and American dimes, etc.? How much is one unit worth in terms of the other?
One of the Greek poets[B] has left us a quaint account of the confusion which existed in his time with regard to the place of months and moons in the calendar:
"The moon by us to you her greeting sends,
But bids us say that she's an ill-used moon
And takes it much amiss that you will still
Shuffle her days and turn them topsy-turvy,
So that when gods, who know their feast days well,
By your false count are sent home supperless,
They scold and storm at her for your neglect."