The Resolution That Standardized Time
By: Grant Piper
Tags: History, This Day In History, Science, Time, World

In October 1884, forty one delegates representing twenty six nations converged on Washington DC with the goal of establishing an internationally recognized system of time zones and time tables in order to quell the growing discontent over the disparate local times.

The conference itself was being driven by the railroad companies which had already established plans to use the Greenwich Median as the basis of a new universal time specifically for the railroads. Not wanting to be outdone by the private sector, the nations met to establish their own rules regarding universal time.

The conference was chaired by Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers, a respected American veteran and decorated naval officer. Countries attended from all over the world including Europe, the Caribbean, East Asia and Africa.

The delegates were distinguished civil servants and men of science such as head surveyors, observatory directors, diplomats, engineers and railroad men.

The International Meridian Conference began on October 1st and ran for over three weeks until a resolution was agreed upon and passed.

The resolutions

After weeks of debating, these resolutions were adopted regarding universal time and its implementation worldwide.

These resolutions are quoted from Derek Howse’s book Greenwich Time which can be viewed here. Emphasis mine.

That it is the opinion of this Congress that it is desirable to adopt a single prime meridian for all nations, in place of the multiplicity of initial meridians which now exist. (This resolution was unanimously adopted.) That the Conference proposes to the Governments here represented the adoption of the meridian passing through the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude. (Ayes, 22; noes, 1; abstaining, 2.) That from this meridian longitude shall be counted in two directions up to 180 degrees, east longitude being plus and west longitude minus. (Ayes, 14; noes, 5; abstaining, 6.) That the Conference proposes the adoption of a universal day for all purposes for which it may be found convenient, and which shall not interfere with the use of local or standard time where desirable. (Ayes, 23; abstaining, 2.) That this universal day is to be a mean solar day; is to begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight of the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian; and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours. (Ayes, 14; noes, 3; abstaining, 7.) That the Conference expresses the hope that as soon as may be practicable the astronomical and nautical days will be arranged everywhere to begin at midnight. That the Conference expresses the hope that the technical studies designed to regulate and extend the application of the decimal system to the division of angular space and of time shall be resumed, so as to permit the extension of this application to all cases in which it presents real advantages. (Ayes, 21; abstaining, 3.)

France’s objections and results

The place in which the prime meridian runs through setting global time. (Public domain)

Despite voting for the resolutions (the nation that voted nay in these cases was San Domingo), France vehemently opposed naming anything after something so inherently British. They opposed calling any international standard anything that was shaded by British culture — which included the term Greenwich Median and Greenwich Mean Time. They insisted on something neutral be put in place and, even after the resolutions were adopted, refused to implement the agreed upon time for decades following this conference.

France tried to make the nomenclature of the meridian neutral with a resolution of their own which read:

That the initial meridian should have a character of absolute neutrality. It should be chosen exclusively so as to secure to science and to international commerce all possible advantages, and especially should cut no great continent — neither Europe nor America.

It failed 3–21.

The failure to adopt France’s resolution of neutrality annoyed the French so much that they refused to initially adopt the new time tables. Paris used their own time until 1911 when legal disputes forced them to adopt the Greenwich Mean Time as their standard of time keeping. Even still, they refused to call it by its agreed upon name insisting on calling it universal time rather than Greenwich time.

Despite their objections, Greenwich Mean Time was slowly adopted as the global standard of time keeping from 1884 onward. It took time to win over local time keepers which had relied on themselves up until this point. Today, all time is kept on a universal time which stems from this unknown conference in 1884.

The French refused to, and have refused to, acknowledge Greenwich Mean Time as a proper name even to this day. They even legislated the use of the term out of existence in France.

After years of fussing, the French eventually got their wish. Today, the more neutral term Universal Standard Time is accepted over Greenwich Mean Time even though they are the same thing.

We take things like standard time zones, internationally kept clocks and universally agreed upon master time for granted. Back in the day, there was no such thing. The recent events of the International Meridian Conference highlights how young the modern world truly is and how many standardized things have been put into place over the last one hundred and fifty years.