Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1883-11-29

| lime IOr commercial use Is ABOUT Cne on
ly incidental product of an astronomical
observatory. 1t is the first thing the as
tronomer must have. and he must have it
constantly. 1t is not therefore business
venture with its attendant risks for an
Observatoryto to sell time" 1t is rather the
utilization of product which will other
wise be unused. There is no pretense
| that the Naval Observatory will do the
work better than it is now done by the
best private ObservatOries, and it is to be
hoped that well enough will be let alone.
There are large areas of territory, partic-
ularly in the south, where there are no
private observatories, which will natural
ly look to the Naval Observatory in the
future, as they have in the past, for their
standard time.
1t is doubtless within the province of
Congress to introduce national legislation
on this subject as pertaining to interstate
commerce. Until such legislation is es-
tablished, either by Congress or the sep
arate States, the question as to what is le-
gally the time of day will occasionally be
in dispute. The General Assembly of the
State of Connecticut. at its January seS-
sion, 1881, passed by L unanimous vote,
AN Act establishing Standard Time"
In this act the Legislature assumed the
right to establish standard time meridi-
an, to make contract for the obtaining
of an accurate time standard, and to re-
quire the railroads of the State, as meas
ure of public safety in railroad traffic, to
tranamit and display time, Bills with
the same object in view have been intro
duced in the legislatures of other States,
and it can only be a short time Until the
time question will be a common subject
of legislation.
The merchants, manufacturers, and
railroad people unite in their favorable
opinion of the law, and the consequent
cessation of vexatious time differences il
the State. The time is furnished, trans
mitted, and displayed throughout the
State with precision and regularity,
and no opinion has yet been ex-
pressed that the State is otherwise than
a gamer by its contracts for furnishing
the time. The experiment is referred to
here as affording an example of what may
be done elsewhere to the mutual .advan-
tage of the States and observatories with
in their borders.
Connected with the time question for
single country like ours is that of inter
national time, to which the new name has
been given of Cosmopolitan time Presi-
dent Darnard has planned and supported
this system, and an International Com
mission has been proposed TO consider it.
In this system the prime meridian is one
hundred and eighty degrees, or twelve
hours, from Greenwich, passes near Beh-
ring Strait, and lies almost wholly in the
ocean. The day begins at midnight, and
the hours are counted up to twenty-fOur.
At intervals of an hour from the prime
meridian occur the secondary meridians.
These meridianS are designated by the
consecutive letters of the alphabet, omit
ting j. and Y. The minutes and seconds
would be the same the world over in Cos
mopolitan time, and the local time at any
place would be found by subtracting the
number of hours corresponding to the
standard meridian from which the local
time is reckOned, local tiAe signifying
the time of the nearest hourly standard
meridian. This is very convenient for
navigators, since the change of count"
takes place near the prime meridian, and
events recorded in Cosmopolitan time are
comparable, without considering differen-
ces in longitude
The necessity of uniformity In time is-
so generally recognized that projects for
its display ares already enlisting capital
in new branch of ind lstry. In Paris.
Berlin, Vienna, London, and more recent
ly in New Haven and New York, stock
companies have been formed for the pur-
pose of regularly selling time to whoever
wants to buy. These companies, which
are financially quite successful abroad,
where the results of the experiment have
already accumulated. receive the time
from the astronomical ObServatories, and
by means of systems of pneumatic tubes,
or telegraph lines. or both combined, they
transmit the time to clock-dial indicators
in the houses or places of business of their
subscribers. Instead of buying a clock,
the coming householder pays new tax
in addition to that for gas and water, and
new monOpolies for furnishing time to
streets and city houses will in he not dis
tant future plague the city fathers.