Sandford Fleming and his Time Zone

Time is a wonderful and dangerous thing. It’s what we all need more of but it cannot be seen or felt. We sometimes can buy more of it but at the end, we all run out of time. We put money in machines to make our clothes washed or dried. Time rules our very extinction. There’s a time to sleep, a time to wake, a time to sow and a time to reap. We make money by working for our time only to spend our hard earned money to go off to a vacation and do as little as we can. It’s been said time heals all wounds and makes the heart grow fonder.

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The list is endless as to what time can do and what time can’t do. I will simplify by writing about a certain man named Sandford Fleming (1827-1915) and what he did with his time on earth. Fleming had been a very busy and industrial person in his 88 years of life. Fleming invented a standard time zone. This was no easy feat. As a matter of fact, one could say it was very time consuming. This timely column started in 1827 at Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, where he was born. He and his brother David immigrated to The Dominion of Canada at the age of 18 to Ontario (then the western half of the British province of United Canada, at that time called Canada West). In 1847 they settled to Peterborough, ON with their cousins. It’s now time to tell the story of his amazing feat which started by Fleming missing a train. After missing a train in 1876 in Ireland because its printed schedule listed p.m. instead of a.m., he proposed a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the centre of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian. At a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute on February 8, 1879, he linked it to the anti-meridian of Greenwich, U.K. He suggested that standard time zones could be used locally, but they were subordinate to his single world time. He continued to promote his system at major international conferences, including the International Meridian Conference of 1884. Fleming's Standard Time Zone began at midnight Atlantic Time in Nova Scotia. That conference accepted a different version of Universal Time, but refused to accept his zones, stating that they were a local issue outside its purview. Nevertheless, by 1929 (14 years after his death) all of the major countries of the world had accepted time zones. Fleming was knighted in 1897 by Queen Victoria. So, if you run out of time today or need more of it, remember Sandford Fleming. Remember, it’s our history, our country. Other items of interest about Fleming were: Canada's first postage stamp (three cent postage stamp); invented a huge body of surveying and map making; engineered much of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway; being a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada and founder of the Royal Canadian Institute; a science organization in Toronto, ON.; Fleming didn’t write James Bond books, that was Ian Fleming. For more information visit these links below. [url=http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10182]http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10182[/url] [url=http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/ref/Sandford.html]http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/ref/Sandford.html[/url] [url=http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Heritage/FSCNS/Scots_NS/Sig_Date/Auld_Nova/Sanford_Fleming.html]http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Heritage/FSCNS/Scots_NS/Sig_Date/Auld_Nova/Sanford_Fleming.html[/url]