The 1884 Time-War — trains & time-zone tensions
It’s 1844. You have important business in London but find yourself in Exeter (how you got there is another story). Luckily, in the summer, the Bristol and Exeter Railway company opened the final stretch of its Bristol to Exeter track. So you’ll catch the train to Bristol, you decide, and then catch a Great Western Railways train to London. You ask a passerby for the time, ‘It’s 20 minutes to noon.’ You know the train leaves at noon exactly and you’re only a few streets away, so you have time to get to the station, buy your ticket, and board with five minutes to spare. Easy. Nevertheless you walk briskly — you have important business after all. You arrive at the station after 10 minutes of briskness, eager to board. But the train is nowhere to be seen. ‘It already left,’ explains the station master, pointing to the clock. 12:06?! How?
No, the passerby did not give you the wrong time, nor were you particularly slow at walking. You’re late for the train because the Bristol and Exeter Railway now runs on London time (14 minutes head of local Exeter time). But what of the important business in London? You’re not the only one to complain, there’s been a recent rise in complaints written to the Times about confusing train times causing chaos and dis-coordination.
Local towns have always had slightly varied times, determined in relation to the sun. Back when travelling and communication were slow, different unsynchronised times weren’t a major inconvenience. For centuries, most people stayed put and so different local times didn’t affect them, and for the majority of people, watches were an unnecessary luxury. Travellers could just adjust their clocks or watches when they arrived at the new town.
The railway boom changed this. Passengers need to know when the train will arrive and depart. Initially, using new telegraph technology, railway companies used to have their own ‘internal’ times (often the local time at the railway company’s headquarters) that could be transmitted or corrected using telegrams. This allowed for conversions between different times but was ridiculously inconvenient — imagine having to constantly convert between local time and different train times depending on your location and the rail operator in order to catch connecting trains or coordinate other appointments.
The easiest solution to these annoying inconsistencies would be one universal British time, and the wheels for this were already in motion. In 1840, Great Western Railway standardised its times to follow Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or London time. It was reported that by 1855, 98% of towns and cities had transferred to GMT, and by 1880, the British government passed the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act which meant GMT was legally adopted country-wide. This movement didn’t come without resistance, though. It caused a number of cities like Oxford and Bristol to adopt three handed clocks — two minute hands for local and railway time respectively.
In Exeter, the protests were stranger still. Watches sold in the city in the late 1840s had two minute dials for local and London time. Some public clocks showed London time whereas others showed local time, and clocks inside the station only ever showed London time. There was a campaign to bring Exeter in line with London time, which cited as evidence for the need for change a case where, ‘a dispute … arose as to a young lady being of age, owing to the church clock saying she was of age and the Cathedral clock saying she was not.’ The mayor and railway company, in an attempt to ease confusion, asked the Dean and Chapter of Exeter to change the time on the cathedral clock which acted as the timekeeper for the city, but the Dean refused. By 1852, however, the telegraph had arrived at Exeter station, and other Western cities like Bath, Bristol, and Plymouth had already adjusted their time. After more pressure from the people of Exeter, the Dean finally conceded to changing the local time in the November of that year.
Varied local times were an issue globally too, and nowhere more so than in America. Across the US and Canada, there were hundreds of local city times, varying by more than three hours, which proved troublesome with new speedy travel and communication. In 1847, noon in Washington DC was 9:02am in Sacramento, 11:18am in Chicago, 12:54pm in Halifax. The confusing conversion system would prove not only inconvenient but lethal with a number of train collisions where the train guards had different times set on their watches.
Unlike in Britain, it would be impossible to implement a universal American time because it’s so geographically widespread. But the train companies decided to ignore local times and use more coordinated alternatives. In late 1883, US railroads started using a standard time system with four time zones based on GMT, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific, and these were adopted as official national time zones by the 1918 Standard Time Act.
Just as rail travel had meant a need for consistent times across different cities, the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable and increased foreign travel and communication demanded international coordination of time measurement. The 1871 International Geographer’s Congress had establishing an international prime meridian high on its agenda, and the next year, the US congress passed an act that authorised the President to call an international conference to establish a common prime meridian for time and longitude.
46 delegates, representing 26 countries met in Washington DC in 1884. Chairman Admiral Rodgers of the USA began the conference by reminding the delegates of the importance of ‘throwing aside national preferences and inclinations’ and ‘seek only the common good of mankind, and gain for science and for commerce’. Despite the faint plea for neutrality, Greenwich quickly became centre of the debate; most navigators had been setting their chronometers (very precise clocks that find longitude at sea) to Greenwich Mean Time for decades, and most global shipping relied on the Greenwich Meridian. As mentioned earlier, railways in America had also already divided North American time zones based on GMT, so Greenwich seemed the natural, most convenient option for a global meridian.
The desire and incentive for coordination at this conference were there for everyone — better global trade links and communication demanded it. But national rivalries between powerful empires were high. Pride and humiliation was at stake, between Britain and France in particular. There was much back and forth between the French delegates and others about whether adopting a meridian passing through Greenwich was reasonable or fair, arguing instead in favour of adopting the meridian at Ferro. Frustration ensued between the delegates on whether more credence should be granted to convenience or fairness, after which Lefaivre, a French delegate proposed the resolution, ‘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,’ on the 6th October. On the 13th October it was dramatically defeated 21 to 3 (with only France, Brazil and San Domingo voting for). France ultimately didn’t adopt the Greenwich Meridian as the beginning of the universal day until 1911, after which they still called it a late variation of Paris mean time.
Despite the impediments caused by national rivalry, the outcomes of the International Meridian Conference were significant. They resolved that there should be one meridian for all nations in place of the many that currently exist, which they decided would run through the Greenwich observatory. They proposed the adoption of a universal day that would not interfere with local time, that would begin at midnight at the meridian, and that as soon as possible, astronomical and nautical days should universally begin at midnight.
Although time zones were not adopted at the conference, the establishment of a universal meridian certainly sped up the adoption of hourly time zones as we have today. Engineer Sir Sandford Fleming’s proposal to divide the world into time-zones based on 15 degrees of longitude was considered at the conference but not adopted so as not to interfere with local times. Instead, time zones were adopted later by each country individually a number of hours ahead or behind coordinated universal time(UTC), which is just a more neutral name for GMT. It’s no surprise that Anglo-French tensions also played a role in the abbreviation of coordinated universal time. The simplest abbreviation would be CUT, surely? Not for the French, who call it ‘temps universel coordonné’ and would have much preferred the acronym TUC. Ultimately UTC was agreed as for both the English and the French, it is better to have a bad abbreviation than one that gives the edge to your arch-nemesis.
Really, what this conference marked was the beginning of globalisation. The coming together of these parties to establish convenience in global trade, travel, and communication and easier collaboration in the scientific community, illustrates intentions to increase international cooperation. The aim was no longer to conquer ever greater expanses of land for imperial glory. Instead, there was a growing acceptance that internationalisation would mean partnership with foreign entities rather than supremacy over them.
Time has continued to be used as a political weapon well into the 20th century. French time used to be the same as British time from 1911 until 1940, when France, ever involved in time-related struggles, was invaded by the German military in the second world war. Occupied France was moved an hour ahead in time, aligning it with German time, and in 1941, the Vichy regime aligned the southern free zone with occupied France to unify railway timetables. A reversal back to GMT after the war was cancelled, and ever since, France has operated an hour ahead of GMT (and two hours ahead during the summer).
And what of modern time-related conflict (outside Doctor Who episodes)? A particularly tragic example comes from China. Unlike Russia, which has 11 time-zones across it’s landmass, the entire land expanse of China operates in one time-zone. China used to have five time zones, but after the Chinese Communist Party(CPC) came to power in 1949 the government required the entire country to operate on Beijing Standard Time for the sake of ‘national unity’. Parts of China’s westernmost province Xinjiang, are directly north of Pakistan, but officially operate 3 hours ahead. In summertime, sunset in most of Xinjiang is at midnight, and in winter, dawn isn’t until the late morning hours. But the locals, mostly Uyghurs, have long used their own time, two hours behind Beijing. As well as being practical, keeping local time used to allow the Uyghur people a form of independence and autonomy that the CPC government tends to suppress. Though currently, I imagine time-keeping is low down the priorities of a community facing something between ethnic cleansing and genocide at the hands of the Chinese government.
Time-keeping is of, course, primarily logistical, and most struggles over time-zones are ultimately about practicality and convenience. But whoever controls the clocks has power over economic activity and people’s daily lives, and as we have seen in some cases, it can be used as a tool to exert political influence or dominance. Did the Dean of Exeter, Thomas Lowe, know in the 1850s that his protests over higher authorities imposing time-changes on his people would be echoed in the coming centuries in far more dire and dark circumstances? Probably not.
