Evening journal., 1902-01-18
WHERE .TIMR \
HAS Its BIRTH
Starts i'd a Lonely Part Of
the Earth
Has to Travel Many Thousand Niles
Before 1t Reaches The United
States

ASuhu ohoih' anu ali tue WOllu Is max
ing good resolutions. But now MANY
of the millions who have been wishing
MANY of their friends a happy New
Year know how the New Year comes
or where 1t comes from. The birthday
or where it comes from? The BIRTH
place of Time, according to the sys-
TEN which makes Greenwich the CEN
tre point of a days journey, is exactly
where a needle driven through the
earth at Greenwich would come out on
the other side. 1t would startle the
natives somewhere in the Pacific-if
there were any natives to startle. which
there are not. Time is born in one of
the loneliest parts of the earth, among
the dreary islands of the Pacific.
There. while London is lazily winding
uD the affairs of the old year, the New
Year begins. and there, January 1,
Father Time set out on his 19O2nd
journey round the earth. Big Ben at
Westminster was striking ~ at noon
on Tuesday when the New Year was
born: the heart of the British Empire.
throbbing with the life of six millions
of people. is always half a day behind
the uninhabited Pacific.
Time has 1880 miles to travel be-
fore it reaches London. and, as it can
not travel more than a thousand miles
an hour, a day is twelve hours old
when 1t comes to England. Fiji feels
the glow of the new time almost as
soon as it begins. A few minutes after
it has dawned on the world and re-
ceived the coolest of welcomes from the
Friendly Islanders or the Kamchat-
kans. the New Year finds Fiji waiting
for 1t with enthusiasm and a few min
utes later it reigns in New Zealand.
A few minutes more. and New Years
Day has reached Australia. For two
hours the wave of time is passing
over the new nation, Just come into
being. and just before half-past two
Australia is settled down again in for
getfulness of the year that has gone.
Calling at Hong Kong at about half
past 4. at Calcutta Just after g. and at
Bombay a few minutes past Z. Time
hurries on toward Africa. Passing
over Asia it calls on the Czar in his
palace at 10 in the mOrning-by the
Pacific clock-and sweeps over the
capitals of Europe and the battlehelds
of South Africa during the next few
hours. The Kaiser welcomes the new
era at H. and ten minutes before noon
Time arrives in Paris.
In four minutes more it is in Eng
land making it's debut in the herring
towns of the East Coast Lowestoft
and Yarmouth were in 1902 six min
utes before London had said good night
to 1901. All Norfolk. Suffolk. Essex
and Kent welcomed the New Year
while London was still in its intro
spective and retrospective 1901 mood.
Margate welcomed January 1 five
minutes before London's December 81
had passed; and Dover was five min
utes ahead. Canterbury four and a
half. Maidstone two. Eastbourne one
and Gravesend one. 1t is one OF the
remarkable incidents Of our chrono-
logical arrangement that while Wool
wich is in the New Year Putney is
still in the old; and If we could split
up time more finely than in seconds
we might be able to tell with exact
ness the moment when Charing Cross
is in one year and the Bank in another
The New Year has completed exactly
half his round when he reaches London
to find London wide awake and star
ing hard at midnight. AS St. Pauls
booms twelve over the dark, still
metropolis. announcing to six waiting
millions that the New Year has come,
all the towns cities and villages west
Of London are still waiting. Liver
pool waits twelve minutes after Lon
don. Plymouth sixteen, Bristol ten,
New Castle six. Birmingham seven,
Sheffield five and Penzance over twen-
ty.. For nearly half an hour two years
have reigned this week in England.
and it was possible for a man in 1901
TO talk on the telephone to man in
1902. The New Year had been speed
ing back to the Pacific for twelve min
utes when it reached Edinburgh and
for seventeen minutes when 1t arrived
in Glasgow. Ireland is much later
lstiH. Belfast being twenty-three and
| Dublin twenty-five minutes behind
London. Then. still flying through
space at a thousand miles an hour,
1902 reaches Newfoundland at half
past 3. New York at five minutes to
5. Chicago at ten minutes to 6 and San
Francisco at ten minutes past 3, just
as London is getting up for its first
New Year breakfast
Still travelling over seas and across
dreary wastes. the year comes to Pit
cairn Island at 9 o'crock, TO Sandwish
Islands at 10. and a little later to Ha-
wall. the cradle of Americas empire.
A few hundred miles further west, the
year is nearly a day old, but Hawaii.
though so near the birthplace OF Time,
happens to be on the wrong side OF
4he EouatOr and is always nearly
, twentv-four hours behind the almanac
Precisely at 70 o'clock on wednesday
noonday in LondOn-New Years Day
was over. and Time, beyond the bounda
of civilization. was lost again IN
Oceania. Twenty-Five thousand miles
in twenty-four hours is Times record
every day, and not all the wise men
i'm Enrnne and America can keep him