Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America - Hardcover

Bartky, Ian R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804738742 ISBN 13: 9780804738743

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

This book studies the transition from local to national timekeeping, a process that led to Standard Time—the world-wide system of timekeeping by which we all live. Prior to the railroads’ adoption of Standard Railway Time in 1883, timekeeping was entirely a local matter, and America lacked any uniform system to coordinate times and public activities. For example, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Boston had three authoritative times, which differed by seconds and minutes. The story begins in the 1830s with the building of the first railroads. Since railway safety depended upon maintaining the temporal separation of trains through precise timing, railroads were the first to establish time standards to govern their operations. The railroads’ switch to five time standards indexed to the Greenwich meridian inaugurated the modern era of public timekeeping and led directly to cities adopting Greenwich-indexed civil time zones. Central to the story are those college and university astronomers who, starting in the 1850s, sold time signals to nearby cities and railroads. From the start, they competed with other entrepreneurs trying to make money by selling time. Decades of negotiations, government lobbying, and battles over customers followed, all in the name of “public service.” Improvements by a host of clockmakers, civil and electrical engineers, telegraph and railway technicians, and instrument makers finally changed the market for accurate time. Public timekeeping became the realm of business investors. Despite the efforts of astronomers and various of their Congressional supporters, who argued for the necessity of a national system of time authorized by the federal government, the railroads’ success with their own system blocked legislation for a national system of time until the First World War. By then, a single source for correct time dominated the public’s timekeeping: the U.S. Naval Observatory’s noon signal. In this first comprehensive, scholarly history of timekeeping in America, the author has drawn upon a rich, untapped archival record, municipal and legislative documents, newspapers, and science and engineering journals to challenge several myths that have grown up around the subject.

About this title

About the Author

Ian R. Bartky is an independent scholar who has written articles on timekeeping for such journals as Scientific American, Technology and Culture, Railroad History, and Sky and Telescope.

From the Inside Flap

This book studies the transition from local to national timekeeping, a process that led to Standard Time—the world-wide system of timekeeping by which we all live. Prior to the railroads’ adoption of Standard Railway Time in 1883, timekeeping was entirely a local matter, and America lacked any uniform system to coordinate times and public activities. For example, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Boston had three authoritative times, which differed by seconds and minutes.
The story begins in the 1830s with the building of the first railroads. Since railway safety depended upon maintaining the temporal separation of trains through precise timing, railroads were the first to establish time standards to govern their operations. The railroads’ switch to five time standards indexed to the Greenwich meridian inaugurated the modern era of public timekeeping and led directly to cities adopting Greenwich-indexed civil time zones.
Central to the story are those college and university astronomers who, starting in the 1850s, sold time signals to nearby cities and railroads. From the start, they competed with other entrepreneurs trying to make money by selling time. Decades of negotiations, government lobbying, and battles over customers followed, all in the name of “public service.” Improvements by a host of clockmakers, civil and electrical engineers, telegraph and railway technicians, and instrument makers finally changed the market for accurate time. Public timekeeping became the realm of business investors.
Despite the efforts of astronomers and various of their Congressional supporters, who argued for the necessity of a national system of time authorized by the federal government, the railroads’ success with their own system blocked legislation for a national system of time until the First World War. By then, a single source for correct time dominated the public’s timekeeping: the U.S. Naval Observatory’s noon signal.
In this first comprehensive, scholarly history of timekeeping in America, the author has drawn upon a rich, untapped archival record, municipal and legislative documents, newspapers, and science and engineering journals to challenge several myths that have grown up around the subject.

Reviews

Once upon a time it could be 3:30 p.m. in Albany, 3:35 in Vermont and 3:20 in Brooklyn, for when long-distance travel meant horses and canals, few people could be sure what time it was, and fewer stood to lose if they guessed slightly wrong. Technically right times (mean solar times), after all, varied from place to place: the sun sets in Albany several minutes before it goes down in Buffalo. But for railways, strict times were essential; without consistent scheduling, passengers missed connections--and trains could collide. An 1853 crash spurred railroad companies to buy exact times from astronomical observatories, whose measurements could be more precise than ground-level clocks. The next few decades saw regional and national struggles over synchronization, as railroads tried to standardize their systems while competing with one another--and to stave off congressional interference. Who would acquire the power to say what time it was? Bartky's specialized but absorbing study of time and timekeeping focuses on astronomers, railroads, inventors and politicians to tell the intricate story of how Standard Railway Time (adopted in 1883, and based on the Greenwich Meridian) came to be. Tracking Americans' shifting "time awareness... from local to regional, and then to national time," the volume is the first broad study of 1800s timekeeping. Amply footnoted and sometimes dry, this is an academic book--but one that should draw serious readers from many fields. Much of it involves the history of science and technology, and the struggles inside and among scientific institutions. But political and business history also enter in: the tale of how most of us came to agree on the time provides, as Bartky says, "an object lesson in how science, government, and private interest can interact." 26 illus. (Aug.)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Quite limited in scope, this is the study of how astronomers at various observatories sold accurate time to local and regional railroads, eventually resulting in standardized time zones in the United States. Journalist Bartky (Scientific American and Railroad History magazines) revels in the minutiae of a century of progress owing not so much to advancements in time-keeping devices as to the moneymaking schemes of the directors of cash-strapped observations. Twenty years in the making, the project was begun while the author worked for the National Bureau of Standards in the 1970s. A third of the book's 300-plus pages consists of reference matter (notes, appendixes, and bibliography), attesting to the depth of his research in various archival collections. This book fills a narrow gap in scholarship-and fills it completely. Historian of science and railroad buffs will appreciate this niche book, but others may find the specificity too restrictive. Recommended primarily for academic libraries.
Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Lib., OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804738742
• ISBN 13: 9780804738743
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 329