Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/822

802 for all in any particular place, or to be continually changing them in communications from place to place, whether by railway, telegraph, or telephone. When universal or world time is used for railways and telegraphs, it seems not unlikely that the public may find it more convenient to adopt it for all purposes. A business man who daily travels by rail, and constantly receives telegrams from all parts of the world, dated in universal time, would probably find it easier to learn once for all that local noon is represented by 17 hours U. T. and midnight by 5 hours (as would be the case in the Eastern States of North America), and that his office-hours are 15 hours to 21 hours U. T., than to be continually translating the universal time used for his telegrams into local time.

If this change were to come about, the terms noon and midnight would still preserve their present meaning with reference to local time, and the position of the sun in the sky, but they would cease to be inseparably associated with twelve o'clock.

The introduction of universal time would practically involve the adoption of the system of counting the hours in one series from 0 to 24, instead of in the two series 0 to 12 and, for, as applied to universal time, the terms ante-meridiem and post-meridiem would be meaningless, except for places on the meridian of Greenwich. The use of the 24-hour system on railways and telegraphs would naturally assist in breaking the spell of habit which associates noon and midnight with twelve o'clock.

It may be mentioned that the Eastern and Eastern Extension Telegraph Companies already use the 24-hour system throughout their extensive lines of telegraph to avoid mistakes of and, and to save telegraphing these unnecessary letters. In this connection the President of the Western Union Telegraph Company in the United States has stated that the adoption of the 24-hour mode of reckoning would, besides materially reducing the risk of error, save at least 150,000,000 letters annually on the lines of his company. It is also noteworthy that ninety-eight per cent of the railway managers in the United States, representing 60,000 miles of railway, have expressed themselves in favor of the adoption of the simple notation from 0 to 24 hours.

Considering that the only change which we are called on, in accordance with the Washington resolution, to make in our time-reckoning on railways is the adoption of the 24-hour system, it may be hoped that our railway companies will not be behind those of the United States in appreciating the simplification in railway time-tables which would result from this reform.