The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-11-18
FATHER TIMES SON OBSERVES
 HIS TWENTT-NINTHfB BIRTHDAY

Father Time is usually pictured and described as a patriarch of ex- trerne age. bowed down by the weight of some seven thousand or seven bil- lfonr years7scfe and theologians differ slightly in their estimates of his age ~As old as Time" is compari- son which the finite mind cannot EFasp- Yet the child of Father Times old age, young MT. Standard Time, is still beardless youth, and today is his twenty-ninth birthday It was on Nov. 1Ss 1888. that Standard Time was born in the United States. Since then he has become a thorough globe trotter, and has been given a warm welcome and permanent home in nearly all the civilized countries of
 -sBefore inc birth of Standard Time. travellers from Boston and Washing ton needed to change their watches i've times. in order to keep up to date. There were over half a hundred stan dares used in the United States and Pacific Even in the same town there were often two different standards, and the other as .sraiIroad'' time If q railway time table is now a weird affair difficult of understanding, it vas a thousand times more so in the through which tfie road passed had a varying method of reckoning time.
 ments. t smon1 n m them e Sir sanford Fleming and Prof Charles F. Dowd. in vented schemes for standardiz1ng vas Was worked out by W. F. Allen of New York. Secretary of the American Association. At noon on Nov. IS. of clocks in all parts of the United States and Canada, and the four great sinse lcxones into. which the North Irfe iits- sze existence European~ nations. which had suffered as much raS America from the hap1azard methods rf reckoning time, soon adopted a
 Commander Hough rece ntIy declar- ed that the observatory in Washing ton is now distributing standard time with errors of only ne-thousandth part of a second Most people will not object if their watches are never dfspensers are not satisfied, and the French and United States govern rlents have completed arrangements lIsh with precision the longitude of American and Europe in their rela- lion to each other by means of wire- less sfrnaIs between the great station at Arlington. Va. and the Einel Tow er in Paris.
 kempts to reckon time by mechanical
 means is found in Isa- xxxviii.. g. written supposedly about 713 B. C., the sun-dial of Ahaz." Pliny says hat Anaxfmander invented a sun-dial about $50 B. c. The first dial of the sun at Rome was placed or, the tenn pie or 1kQlIlHUSy dDOxt S0o D. N>.s WAAcit lime was divided into hours The elepsydra. or water-clock, was invent pd by scipic Nasica, a Roman, about T5S B. C. Caesar is alleged to have Found crude clocks in use in Britain when he invaded that country in 55 B. e. The dark ages put a check so invention, and in 76O A. D. clock sent to King Pepin of France by Pope Paul I. was said to be the only one In the world. The Saracen invasion brought about revival of interest in fcfence. and the first clock at all sim liar to those now in use was the in~ reuffnn of a Saracen mechanic in the thirteenth century In England. it is E,id no clock was accurate or de- fon Court in 15z0. All that is known ss bout the maker is that his initials were N O.