The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-12-09
SOME WAYS OF RECKONING TIME.
Day begins at sunset in MOhamme-
dan Lnnds-Four Kinds of Time at
lei PnSo, Tex.
From the New York Sun.


From the New York Sun.
The ordinary method Of reckoning time
in Mohammedan countries is from sunset
to sunset. Twelve O'Clock is al sunset, and
this is the beginning of the day. Two pc
RODS of twelve hours then pass til the
next sunset, whereupon everybody sets
his watch, if he has one, backward or
forward, according to The season. OF course
accurate time is impossib under such a
system. The telegraphs and railroads in
Syria for example keep anything but ex-
act time, though it IN ght he procured from
the observatory at Beyrout VIII oh uses IS
mean time. In Teheran, Persia, a midday
gun is fred by the time shown on a dial,
and this in spite OF the fact that the cor
rect local neon time might be procured at
the telegraph Office, which is regulated
daily by a time signal from Greenwich,
and is the tine standard for an telegraph
&c business. But the merchants and the
street car company keep gun time, and
the railroad trains do not seem to require
a timetable at ALL as they seldom start
until fun or required t. start by a govern
ment order.
There are out-of- the-way parts of the
wor d that keep very good time, because
their clocks are r. gulated by telegraph
from Greenwich and then the Greenwich
mean me is reduc 10 local time, accord
ing to longitude difference. Thus at La
gos ard the Gold Coast West Africa, The
local time is checked daily by telegraph
from Greenwich and transmitted 10 all the
telegraph Offices in the colonies. The time
at Accra is only IS seconds slower than
that of Greenwich, and is the time used
throughout the gold coast,
Most any sort of time is kept in China
As rule, the Chinese use an apparent sun
time obtained from sundials. The foreign
ers al the ports on the coast use an APP
proXimate local time calculated from the
Shanghai time, supplied by the telegraph
companies In the great city of ITEM
tsin with 100000 inhabitants, the time
is determined by the municipal chronome-
ter, which is the town hall cock. 1t is
supposed to be regulated every Saturday,
when the community may set their
watches, but II has been known to be in
error at least three minutes.
Last December was The time when all
the towns in Colombia were expected
thereafter, to use the time of Bogota, the
capital. With this responsibility upon them
1t is hoped that the public clocks of that
city win improve In their timekeepinng
for visitors at BogOta say IL is nothing I'M
usual for the public clocks to disagree by
fully quarter of an hour.
In India, the standard time for the whole
of the peninsula is the mean time of the
y
on through lines of railroad, and in re-
cording the time of sending kilograms to
foreign countries. Local time Is, however
used in most towns and villages, and il Is
announced by clocks striking, gongs, bells
and guns the signals being given from
churches, treasury buildings, forts and tel
egraph offices. The local clocks are set
daily by the time telegraphed from Ma
dras and each telegraph Office has a close
ly printed table, filing about fifty pages.
giving the difference between Madras and
local time for all the government tele-
graph offices in India.
Not a few countries constantly use two
standards of time. This is not trouble
some at all when we consider that, be-
fore the adoption of the hour zones, the
railroads across our own continent en-
ployed about seventy standards of time
in making up their time tables. Rail-
roads and telegraphs throughout Spain
use Madrid time but for all other pur-
poses the official time is determined by the
meridian of each locality. Throughout
Russia st. Petersburg time is used for
telegraphic purposes. and each place has
it's own local time besides. In Portugal
the country towns keep their local time
very roughly, but Lisbon and the rail-
road and telegraph services have the time
Of the Tapada royal observatory. There
Is considerable confusion in the Neither
lands and if ones watch does not agree
with the town clocks as he travels through
the land 1t doesn't follow that he has a
poor time-keeper. In the railroad stations
telegraph and postofices the exact time
of the Greenwich observatory w.ll be
found. In many towns Amsterdam time
is in use, and IL is about twenty minutes
faster than reliable clocks fin many other
towns that use Greenwich time; and sim