Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, So Tracy. Humans have understood the passage of time and been able to calculate the length of a day pretty accurately for quite a while. Yea longer than we have records, probably, yes, But there was not a standard way to approach time on a global scale until pretty late in the game. For hundreds of years longer than that, even cities or towns generally had their own local time. That time was determined by when the sun hit at zenith above them, and that was established as noon, and the rest of the hours of the day were determined based on that. Pretty simple. Each municipality or community had an official timekeeper. That person was the authority on what time it was. Any other clocks are watches in that community were set to match the timekeeper's time. That kept everybody in a group on the same page. However, though this worked just fine and for a very long time. As humans began to industrialize and travel became more swift, thanks largely two railroads, it became much more important to figure out what time it was both in the place where your journey started and the place where it ended, as well as any stops in between, and that could rapidly get really confusing. So, just as a very sloppy example, imagine a journey today where you have a flight with a layover, and if you left your starting airport and you got to the layover airport and their time was twenty three minutes off of what you expected, because often they were not like round numbers that were different, figuring out your connection could get really dicey in a hurry. And that kind of thing was happening to people traveling by rail before a standard time was established, and it was more than just an inconvenience because this also led to dangerous conditions and collisions when trains were running based on different local times but on the same track. So even the people that were scheduling trains couldn't quite get it together with one another to make a system to make it safe for a while. So today we're going to talk about that problem, and specifically about the man who is usually credited with solving the problem by standardizing time zones, and that person was Sandford Fleming. Sanford Fleming was born January seven, eight seven, in Kirkcaldy, five Scotland. Parents were Elizabeth Aren't Fleming and Andrew Greig Fleming. Andrew was a carpenter. The Flemings had a sizeable family. In addition to Sandford, there were seven other children. Sanford's early education was in school in Kennaway and Killcaldy, and then at fourteen he started studying with an engineer and surveyor named John Sang. This was a natural fit even as a child, Sandford had shown a natural skill at drawing and mathematics alike. Yeah, kind of perfectly intersect into like surveying and architecture work. Saying gave Fleming a lot of practical, really valuable hands on instruction. Scotland's railroads were rapidly expanding at this time, and when Saying was called the survey sites as part of that project, his student went with him and he assisted. He was given tasks on site, but Fleming saw a future for himself outside of Scotland, even though he did enjoy surveying. After several years under Saying's mentorship, Sandford moved from Scotland to Canada in eight He did not make this journey alone. His cousin Henry Fleming and his brother David also moved to Canada with him. All three young men were hoping to find employment and new opportunities in North America, and they were all so hoping that they would be able to acquire land and become settled enough that the rest of their family could join them. The Fleming trio sailed aboard a ship called the Brilliant, and this was not an easy journey. On May one, which was only a week into the voyage, Sandford recorded this in his journal quote, as the evening advanced, the storm grew worse. I never expected to see daylight again. When a great wave swept above our heads, it had a sound as if the sea was closing over us. We slept none all night. Sandford is said to have been so convinced that they were all about to die that he put a message in a bottle and threw it overboard. Has had a farewell letter to the family in it, and that bottle did get to Scotland, But it looks like by the time the family received it, they knew that Sandford, David, and Henry had all gotten to Canada safely. Yet that was a long trip though. That was a five week long trip, so after this we think we're gonna die night. They still had four more weeks at sea to probably white knuckle it through the entire journey, and then after landing in Quebec City, the three young men had another three weeks of travel ahead of them. They boarded a steamship to what was at the time called Upper Canada that would eventually be Ontario, and that was to the city of Peterborough. They're Fleming found work with a surveyor named Richard Birdsall. Fleming needed to be certified as a surveyor in Canada to work on his own, and that was going to take some money and some time and some experience, and to help cover his basic expenses, he took sidework in map making jobs so that he could bring in extra money. He drew maps of various municipalities, including Peterborough, Hamilton, Cobourg, and Toronto. And it was also in Toronto that he moved into a new job working for a surveyor named John Stouton Dennis. Finally, on April nine, Fleming got his Canadian Surveyors ortification. Almost immediately after being certified, Fleming joined with other surveyors they formed the Canadian Institute in Toronto. This was intended as a professional organization for surveyors, engineers and architects. The society was founded in June of eighteen forty nine, but it didn't get the membership and structure that was needed to be recognized as a professional society. Fleming was not willing to let the group fall apart, so he reorganized it as a scientific society and remained involved with it in the fifteen years that he lived in Toronto. He also spearheaded the group's production of its periodical, which was just titled Canadian Journal. Two professional achievements marked Fleming's life in eighteen fifty one. First, the map of Toronto that he had worked on with John Stotton Dennis, which was the last of those map projects that he had done as sidework, was published, and then he designed the first Canadian postage stamp. He sometimes credited with making the beaver like the landmark animal of Canada and their unofficial mascot at that point. In eighteen fifty two, Sandford Fleming started working for the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Union Railroad as an assistant to Frederick William Cumberland. He had been one of his collaborators and setting up the Canadian Institute. They're working relationship, though, was really not good. Fleming became increasingly irritated with Cumberland, who often took a lot of side jobs that split his attention off from their railroad work. Things became so heated between them that Cumberland fired Fleming in eighteen fifty five, but Fleming felt that his supervisor had been the one who was in the wrong, and he went to the railroad's leadership to complain. The result of this seemed like a win for Fleming. He was given Cumberland's job, but Cumberland was on the railways board of directors, and over the next few years the two of them just kept clashing more and more. Fleming was ultimately the one who lost in their disputes. Yeah, there was a particularly contentious argument about pay that he really really thought Cumberland was responsible for and he did not win that one, and it really stung. And as that conflict between Fleming and Cumberland had continued to grow, Fleming had been allowed to stay with the railroad as an employee that had become the Northern railway at that point, but he was also allowed with permission to take side jobs. This was different for him and that he had gotten permission to do this, whereas Cumberland was just taking jobs whenever he wanted, so he saw it as a different situation. And Fleming had also started his own private firm with a colleague named Collingwood Schreiber. The two of them designed the Palace of Industry for Toronto in eighteen fifty eight. If you look at photos of this particular structure, it probably looks very familiar because it was based on Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace created for London's Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one, which we have talked about on the show before. Fleming continued his railway work for decades. He thought it was important to expand the railroads, and in particular to establish a transcontinental railway. Fleming duet plans for various very ambitious railway projects and lobbied the government both in Canada and in Britain for funding for these projects. Initially, he struggled to get approvals, but he was making a name for himself in the process. When it became really an obvious and pressing need for a railway to connect Canada's continental colonies to the maritime colonies. Sanford Fleming was the obvious choice to everybody to become the chief surveyor for the project. He was given that job in eighteen sixty three, and in eighteen sixty seven he was promoted to Engineer in chief for the Intercolonial Railway. And despite the various conflicts, he was growing quite successful. And as that success grew, Fleming wisely invested in real estate that not only expanded his wealth, but it also made some strategic sense for his work. He wasn't like buying speculating on real estate. He was buying basically land for himself in various places. He had moved to Ottawa in eighteen sixty nine. That was a move that was pretty necessary because he needed to be closed to federal government offices for the work he was doing in In eighteen seventy four, he also bought a home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so that when he traveled there for work on the ongoing Maritimes project, he would have a home base. And he also, as had been planned, moved his family over to Canada and settled them in Halifax. We'll pause here for a quick sponsor break, and when we come back, we'll talk about the ways that Sanford Fleming came into conflict with his colleagues, which, based on the conflict so far, seems a little unsurprising they would continue. Fleming, who was known to be obstinate but also often right, continued to butt heads with various peers in the industry. This seems to have pretty much always been a case of Fleming being certain that he knew better than the other party what was genuinely best for any given project. For example, when commissioners of the National Railway wanted to use timber for the construction of bridges as part of the Intercolonial Railway project, Fleming was adamant that they should be using steel and stone instead, and he went right up the chain of command in Ottawa government to make that case. Fleming got his way, and as a consequence, those structures were far sturdier and had longer life than was projected had the bridges been built with timber. This, of course, seems pretty obvious now, but in the late eighteen sixties the cost difference was so significant that it was considered a better idea by a lot of people to use Timber Sandford fleming approach, which also involves some new engineering techniques that he was pioneering, resulted in bridges that were strong enough and with enough longevity that they actually cost less to maintain over the long term. Even though he was having a proven track record, the railways kept seeing Fleming as a problem. After he became the chief engineer on the Pacific Railway. Fleming was very outspoken about his ideals, and a friend of his, Reverend George Grant, even published a book detailing the reverence travels with Fleming as he made his surveys. That book was the best seller. It's noted as giving a lot of insight into the railroads and its benefits to the general public, but the railroad did not appreciate moves like that. The railroad found Fleming's constant willingness to just share his views with the public to be a problem. He worked for the railroad, but he wasn't approved to be a spokesman for the railroad, and that created issues as his outspokenness made him the face of the railroads to the public. He was let go in May of eighteen eighty with a retirement severance of thirty thousand dollars. This is one of those things that I think if you've never worked in a corporate structure, you might be like, why shouldn't he? But if there are always people, I mean, it would be like me if I just started shooting my mouth off about the way like our company runs part of its business, and they would be like, Holly, that's not your business, shut up, um, And that would be valid because it's not my business. Every company I've worked for has had rules about like what kind of thing you're not, whether you're allowed to speak on behalf of the company, and if you are allowed, there's still a bunch of rules about it. He may have been the expert, but he was a stracy just said, not designated as a spokesman. So for him to just go blab stuff all the time was really problematic. But just four years after this devastating, essentially firing, they framed in as a retirement and he got severance, but he had really been fired of Four years later, Fleming, who had actually continued to have a stake in the Canadian Pacific Railway, became director of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had purchased shares in the Hudson's Bay Company. That company had transferred massive land holdings to the Canadian government in the eighteen seventies. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company was incorporated in eighteen eighty one by Act of Parliament, and so he was connected to all of this by virtue of having had those shares. Fleming had served in a role as resident Canadian director with Hudson's Bay, and he applied for the Canadian Pacific Railway director position in eighty three and got it. So, if you're thinking I thought this episode was about time zones, why have we been talking about railroads this whole time, it's because the railroad work is directly tied to the establishment of standardized time. As a career railroad man who traveled a lot, Fleming had a deep appreciation for how tricky and can using it could be to reconcile the local time and whatever place that was he were traveling. And when it came to running an entire unified transportation system had to go in and out of a variety of places that all kept their own local time, this whole task was a huge headache. You can see where someone building a railroad would be like wait, but what time is it where this station is, Well, it's seventeen minutes later than at the previous station, Holly, oh Okay. Even before he had been let go from the railroad in eighteen eighty, Fleming was taking on new roles outside of the industry. In eighteen seventy nine, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario asked him to become chancellor. That kind of made him the spokesperson for science and professional education for the school. He was really active in that position for the rest of his life and helped to establish the School of Mining and Agriculture there, and he lobbied for financial support for the university science programs. Also in eighteen seventy nine, Daniel Wilson reinstated Fleming at the Canadian Institute. Wilson, like Fleming, thought there should be standardized time. Because Fleming was already seen as a scientific authority by both the public and by a lot of his peers. All of these developments coming at the same time really made the late eighteen seventies the right moment for Fleming to make a case for a standardized time around the world. There were two different and separately prepared reports that were published in eighteen seventy nine about the problem of their not being a standardized time. One of those was written by Fleming, the other was written by chief of the United States Weather Service, Cleveland Abbey. Fleming read his report in front of the Canadian Institute, and then it went to the Governor General and then up to the Colonial Office. Throughout its movement and its distribution, the reception to this paper was extremely good. Everyone agreed that something needed to be done to get people on one unified system. Abby was also getting positive reactions to his paper, which he first presented to the American Meteorological Society. His impetus for writing this report was a series of observations on the Northern Lights, and because of a lack of an agreed upon meantime, reports from different places were almost impossible to reconcile to compile actual data. While Fleming wanted to help the train industry, Abby wanted to create a stronger guideline for time based science reporting. But once Abby and Fleming realized that each of them had written on this subject and had also used very similar ideas about how to accomplish a global system of time, they didn't do what you might expect if you've listened to previous episodes featuring scholars who have similar ideals, and honestly, if you've listened to the earlier part of this episode about how uh kind of argumentative that Fleming could be. They did not have a fight about it. They joined forces. The two men had a lot of connections throughout North America and Europe. They had these connections in both government and the scientific communities. They knew if they widened those connections and if they lobbied for the adoption of time standards as a team, they could have a really wide net of influence. Yeah, it was like, you have a whole group of people that you con curry favor with. I also have a different group of people. What if we put these all together? How big will our influence be? Now? Just to be clear, these papers that came out that same year did not just spring up out of the blue. Both of these men and others had been working on this idea and writing about it for some time before eighteen seventy nine. Usually people will point to eighteen seventy six, when Fleming had published a paper called Terrest Real Time, which opened with quote, the question to which I proposed to direct attention is not purely English in its interest, or indeed limited to any particular country or continent. It is a question which concerns all nations in common, and it is probably of less importance to the inhabitants of the British Isles than to colonists and those who live in continental countries. It went on to say, quote, within a comparatively recent period, the human race has acquired control over a power which already has in a remarkable degree changed the condition of human affairs. The application of steam to locomotion by land and water has given an enormous stimulus to progress throughout the world, and with the electric telegraph as an auxiliary, has somewhat rudely shaken customs and habits which have been handed down to us from bygone centuries. We still cling, however, to the system of chronometry inherited from a remote antiquity, notwithstanding difficulties and inconveniences which are constantly met in every part of the world, but which are so familiar to us that they are not regarded or are silently endured. It's a very long winded way to say you don't have to miss your trains all the time. We can miss this. We don't have to keep doing it this way just because the way we've the way we've done it for so long. Yeah. Fleming's work on this subject was more extensive than Abby's, which is why he is largely credited with the idea of creating and championing standard time. He was also, as we have said, very outspoken, so his name became the one more recognized as the leader of the effort to get a time system adopted. Both of them basically had this idea to set up twenty four time zones around the world to match the number of hours in a day, and to divide the circumference of the equator by twenty four to establish those zones. Fleming had given an example of the issues of local timekeeping for travelers in his eighteen seventy six paper, one that seems taken from his own life experience and his intimate knowledge of train travel. Quote. To illustrate the points of difficulty, let us first take the case of a traveler in North America. He lands, let us say, at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and starts on a railway journey through the eastern portions of Canada. His route is over the Intercolonial and Grand Trunk Lines. He stops at St. John, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. At the beginning of the journey, he sets his watch by Halifax time. As he reaches each place in succession, he finds a considerable variation in the clocks by which the trains are run, and he discovers that at no two places is the same time used. Between Halifax and Toronto. He finds the railways employing no less than five different standards of time. If the traveler remained at any one of these cities referred to, he would be obliged to alter his watch in order to avoid much inconvenience and perhaps not a few disappointments and annoyances to himself and others. If, however, he should not alter his watch, he would discover on reaching Toronto, but it was an hour in five minutes, faster than the clocks and watches in that city. You can see why this would be a big pain in the neck. We're going to talk about how all of this discussion about time finally turned into action in just a moment. But first we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going. Fleming's greatest asset in his work to standardize time was the American Society of Civil Engineers. Because so many of their members worked for various North American railroads, they all had a vested interest in fixing this problem. The society instituted a standing committee on time in one and Fleming was named as its chairman. He used this position to gather data from railroad workers and scientists, paying the research expenses for all of this out of his own pocket, and he found out pretty quickly that just about everyone in the railroad industry was in favor of his system. So though he was planning to take his findings to the US Congress for action, the North American railways acted independently before that could even happen, and cooperatively adopted his plan for one hour time zones on November three. So keep in mind that before this there were a hundred and forty four different localized times being used in the United States alone, so no wonder an entire industry that was trying to link all these places together was in favor of the plan. Simplified things for them considerably, yes, and after the trains adopted it, most of North America kind of followed suit, but even so there wasn't anything official in place at a government level, and other continents and countries were still kind of doing their own thing. But the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Meteorological Society were very vocal about the need for a wider adoption of this system, and members of those groups reached out to their contacts in Congress to push for action. President Chester A. Arthur also requested that some plan for a wider adoption be explored, and at the same time, the papers by both Fleming and Abbey were still being circulated to various other countries and support continued to grow. The results of this was that in October of eighteen eighty four, the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington, d C. This conference was called entirely with the goal of choosing one single global prime meridian is the position of zero degrees longitude, and that would be the base for all the other calculations. Twenty six nations participated in this Austria, Hungary, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hawaii, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Netherlands, Paraguay, Russia, San Domingo, Salvador, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, and Venezuela. Sometimes you'll see this reported as twenty two countries, because a lot of folks weren't there yet on the first day. I'm just gonna, in my head canon be it's because the time zones didn't exist and they had missed their connections. Admiral CRP. Rogers, who was one of the US delegates, was named President of the conference, and in his opening speech, Roger stated that quote in my own profession that of a seaman. The embarrassment arising from the many prime meridians now in use is very conspicuous, and in the valuable interchange of longitudes by passing ships at see, often difficult and hurried, sometimes only possible by figures written on a blackboard, much confusion arises, and at times grave danger. In the use of charts to this trouble is also annoying, and to us who live upon the sea, a common prime meridian will be a great advantage. I need not trespass further upon your attention, except to lay before you the subject we are invited to discuss the choice of a meridian to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world. The meridian that passed through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England had been in use by a lot of mariners and railroads for some time as the mean from which all distance and time was calculated. It was not a universally accepted prime meridian before this conference, Maps that were created in different countries would often put the zero longitude line through the capital of whatever country the map was made in. This kind of reminds me of our Gertis Mercatur episode talking about different places putting their north north not necessarily being up. It's got some similarities to that, and that is made calculating navigational roots and difficult. But it wasn't about time and selecting a prime meridian that would be agreed on internationally. The hope was that a universal time what eventually became known as Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, would be established. The minutes to this entire conference are readable online. There's a link to them at their Project Guttenberg location. In our show notes and a lot of it is pretty dry parliamentary procedure. But Pierre Jensen, one of the French delegates and also the director of the Physical Observatory of Paris, made the case that a prior gathering in Rome had seemed to only consider the geographical aspect of the meridian question and not the hydrographic needs of the world. He made an impassioned and lengthy speech in which he stated, quote, nearly all the astronomical tables used at the present time by the astronomers and the navies of the world are French and calculated for the Paris meridian. This is also a little bit related to our episode on the discovery of longitude, which you can check out for a kind of a companion piece to this. It also reminds me of the Esperanto episode when there were conferences about what if we adopted Esperanto as an international language, and France was like, but France is already the international language, or French is already the international language. Yes. Anyway, Jason went on to make it clear that he felt that France had always been brushed aside and considerations, and that he clearly saw the adoption of Greenwich as the international prime meridian as an unfair advantage to England that would just lead to future conflict. Arguing quote, I now hastened to say that I am persuaded that the proposition voted for at Rome was neither made nor suggested by England. But I doubt whether it would render a true service to the English nation if it be agreed to. An immense majority of the navies of the world navigate with English charts. That is true, and it is a practical complement to the great maritime activity of that nation. When this freely admitted supremacy shall be transformed into an official and compulsory supremacy, it will suffer the vicissitudes of all human power, and that institution, the common Meridian, which by its nature is of a purely scientific nature, and to which we would assure a long and certain future, will become the object of burning competition and jealousy among nations. It's an interesting thought. It will make England too important, and we will all quite about this forever. And this is also like it just came up in the Mercator episode also about like this map that's a standard puts Europe in the middle. It's the same kind of thought process about like the eurocentric city and in this case like the Britain specifics and eccentricity of all of it. Now, the French delegation did propose a resolution that would avoid this problem. That resolution read quote that the initial meridians 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. That resolution got only three votes of support from France, Brazil and San Domingo. It did not pass, but the conference did pass seven other resolutions, which read as follows. One 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 exists too. That the Conference proposes to the government's here represented, the adoption of the meridian passing through the center of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude three. That from this meridian, longitude shall be counted in two directions up to one eighty degrees east longitude being plus and west longitude minus four 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 other standard time. We're desirable. Five that this universal day is to be a mean solar day. It 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. Six. That the Conference expresses the hope that, as soon as maybe practicable, the astronomical and nautical days will be arranged everywhere to begin at mean midnight. Seven 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. So as you read that, you may have surmised that though the Conference established the prime meridian, it did not dictate its adoption in any real way. Each country could enact the system, however, and whenever it wished. In the sixteen years between the conference and the dawn of the twentieth century, most countries had officially adopted or officially transition to the resolutions agreed to by the International Meridian Conference, and that was still a very at your own pace approach, with some countries keeping their own time for a while or observing the standardization but not in any official way. Although the US had adopted it pretty completely by for instance, it wasn't actually cautified or mandatory until nineteen eighteen. Countries also weren't bound to adhere to the twenty four hour fifteen degrees of longitude plan where it didn't make sense. And if you look at a time zone map today, you'll see plenty of places where the time zone lines shift to follow the boundaries of different countries or states, or so that the line runs along a river, just to make things a little simpler in day to day life, and because you're probably wondering if you don't already know, some places use half hour time zones where it makes sense, and because the polls are where the lines of longitude all converge, they use the same coordinated universal time as Greenwich. Those time zone lines have shifted over the years as well. I think the most recent change was in so pretty recently. For example, Georgia was initially split by a time zone line when standardization was adopted. So very roughly speaking, if you know the state of Georgia, the western third of the state was in the Central time zone while the rest was in the Eastern time zone. And it actually wasn't until one that the State of Georgia was entirely moved into the Eastern time zone. Now for US folks, on March nineteenth eighteen, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Standard Time Act, making it law in the US. The Eastern, Central Mountain, Pacific, and Alaskan time zones were all established at that time. Those time zones are still the ones that we use. Although at that point time zones fell under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission. That work was shifted over to the Department of Transportation when it was founded in nineteen sixties six. There has been a lot of discussion recently about daylight savings time. There are other countries that do some shifting, but we're focusing on the U S since this has been a big issue lately. It was established in the US through that Standard Time Act. The idea was that if we shifted time around so that people were awake and active during most of the hours where there would be sunlight, less energy would be used. This was initially a World War One money saving measure that was new in terms of legislation, but it wasn't a new idea. Benjamin Franklin had pitched a similar idea in France as a way to save candles. Sometimes people credit him with inventing daylight savings time. That's not quite correct. His version was more about shifting your personal schedule, not changing the time by an hour. She's basically like just just say you wake up at ten instead of nine, or like he just wanted to change it. An entomologists from New Zealand named George Hudson had actually suggested a clock change to conserve daylight hours back in though after the war, daylight saving time went away until World War Two, when it was once again implemented. It was repealed again in It wasn't until the passing of the Uniform Time Act in nineteen sixty six that Congress made a national standard time, including the observance of daylight saving time. Although Hawaii and Arizona both opted out of daylight Saving time, with the exception of the navajun aation in the northeast of what's now Arizona. The Uniform Time Act also set daylight Saving time as a permanent annual shift, starting the last Sunday in April and ending the last Sunday in October. Of course, those dates have changed over the years. In March, the U. S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act. This wasn't an official vote, it was a verbal They all were like yes, and then there are some question marks if they understood it. Yeah, it's a thing called unanimous consent. And apparently afterwards some senators who were interviewed were like, I don't know what just happens. Right, This Sunshine Protection Act would is intended to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. It still needs to pass in the House of Representatives and it would then need to be signed into law by the President. This has certainly sent a lot of people into a frenzy because the bill has supporters and attractors on both sides of the political aisle, and if you are on social media at all, you have seen people very upset about it. In both directions, probably because we're recording this. The House will vote and all of these things will be handled before we published, because how stuff works. As for Sanford Fleming, he was one of the charter members of the Royal Society of Canada when it was established in eighteen eighty two, and he served as the organization's president in eight eight. He was given honorary doctorates from several schools and was knighted in eighteen nine seven. He died in Halifax in nineteen fifteen was buried in Ottawa. So yes, he barely did not live long enough to see the United States enact They're standardized time officially, although he saw it adopted pretty much everywhere in his lifetime. He also, I should say, as much as he sounds like a pill, he did die in the home of his daughter. He was surrounded by his loved ones. He was very adored by his family. So I think he was professionally, very stalwart in his beliefs. But he sounded like he was not a horrible man. I want to make that clear well. And as a person who can be very stubborn, especially if I think I'm right about something, I kind of get it. I have for listener mail a very very very late thank you, because yes, most everyone knows we've been staying home for this whole pandemic um. Our office is currently changing places. We are moving through different digs, which means that all of the stuff that goes to stuff you missed in history class goes to my desk. And last Tuesday, thirty two boxes arrived by courier on my front porch that the office manager had sent to my home. Oh my goodness of largely like books from publishers, but also a lot of gems among them. And one of those gems was a gift sent to us by our listener, Tom, who writes ms Fry, because he knew it was coming to to me essentially at the office. I hope this finds you and yours well. A greeting which takes on new meeting in today's world. Some time ago I mentioned the enclosed waffle maker to you on Twitter. You seemed delighted on the concept but dubious about the cost. After receiving mine and it languishing for months, I realized I would be unlikely to ever use it, so I decided to pass it on to someone who would make use of it. I hope it brings you some small measure of the pleasure and entertainment that you and Miss Wilson have brought to me over the years. May you and yours have days filled with joy, nights filled with peace, and lives filled with love. Sincerely, Tom, which is the sweetest note of all time. But this waffle maker, which I remember talking about on Twitter, makes waffles that look like legos and you can stack them together. Oh that's great. I love it. It is and it comes with two little trays that are like your base tray, so you can put your blocks and Um. When next you find yourself here in Atlanta, Tracy, we are going to have waffle feast to the likes of which has never been seen. So excited. We'll do savory waffles, We'll do sweet waffles. We'll make waffles with pumpkin. We'll make waffles with apple, We'll make waffles, I don't know, we make fish waffles. Whatever we want to do. It's gonna be a waffle party. Um. Thank you so much, Tom. I uh. It was one of the things in the midst of opening box after box of books from publishers, I was like, what is this magical discovery. He sent that back in January, So that's an indicator of how often I'm I've been in the office twice in the last two and a half years. That's amazing. I know. We have so many listeners who are so thoughtful and want to send us physical items. Let that be a lesson to you. I may or may not see them for a year or more. And at this moment, like Holly and I are both working Me pretty much exclusively remotely, Holly mostly too exclusively remotely. Oren's High. Our office is kind of between spaces at this moment with this move, So if you look up our address online, it's probably our old office that will come up in search results, And so if you send stuff there, you might never see it and they get lost forever. And I think we're still kind of working through what things will look like in the new space, which to my knowledge, we don't actually have access to yet. So you're thinking of sending a physical item, just hold off for a little bit so it doesn't go into just Mailimbo. Yes, but I'm very excited for waffles. Thank you, Tom. If you would like to write to us in a way that is almost guaranteed to get through. You can do that via email at History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also, of course find us on social media as Missed in History pretty much everywhere, and if you would like to subscribe to the show and you have not yet, no matter what time zone you're in, it's super duper easy. You can do that on the I heart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, So Tracy. Humans have understood the passage of time and been able to calculate the length of a day pretty accurately for quite a while. Yea longer than we have records, probably, yes, But there was not a standard way to approach time on a global scale until pretty late in the game. For hundreds of years longer than that, even cities or towns generally had their own local time. That time was determined by when the sun hit at zenith above them, and that was established as noon, and the rest of the hours of the day were determined based on that. Pretty simple. Each municipality or community had an official timekeeper. That person was the authority on what time it was. Any other clocks are watches in that community were set to match the timekeeper's time. That kept everybody in a group on the same page. However, though this worked just fine and for a very long time. As humans began to industrialize and travel became more swift, thanks largely two railroads, it became much more important to figure out what time it was both in the place where your journey started and the place where it ended, as well as any stops in between, and that could rapidly get really confusing. So, just as a very sloppy example, imagine a journey today where you have a flight with a layover, and if you left your starting airport and you got to the layover airport and their time was twenty three minutes off of what you expected, because often they were not like round numbers that were different, figuring out your connection could get really dicey in a hurry. And that kind of thing was happening to people traveling by rail before a standard time was established, and it was more than just an inconvenience because this also led to dangerous conditions and collisions when trains were running based on different local times but on the same track. So even the people that were scheduling trains couldn't quite get it together with one another to make a system to make it safe for a while. So today we're going to talk about that problem, and specifically about the man who is usually credited with solving the problem by standardizing time zones, and that person was Sandford Fleming. Sanford Fleming was born January seven, eight seven, in Kirkcaldy, five Scotland. Parents were Elizabeth Aren't Fleming and Andrew Greig Fleming. Andrew was a carpenter. The Flemings had a sizeable family. In addition to Sandford, there were seven other children. Sanford's early education was in school in Kennaway and Killcaldy, and then at fourteen he started studying with an engineer and surveyor named John Sang. This was a natural fit even as a child, Sandford had shown a natural skill at drawing and mathematics alike. Yeah, kind of perfectly intersect into like surveying and architecture work. Saying gave Fleming a lot of practical, really valuable hands on instruction. Scotland's railroads were rapidly expanding at this time, and when Saying was called the survey sites as part of that project, his student went with him and he assisted. He was given tasks on site, but Fleming saw a future for himself outside of Scotland, even though he did enjoy surveying. After several years under Saying's mentorship, Sandford moved from Scotland to Canada in eight He did not make this journey alone. His cousin Henry Fleming and his brother David also moved to Canada with him. All three young men were hoping to find employment and new opportunities in North America, and they were all so hoping that they would be able to acquire land and become settled enough that the rest of their family could join them. The Fleming trio sailed aboard a ship called the Brilliant, and this was not an easy journey. On May one, which was only a week into the voyage, Sandford recorded this in his journal quote, as the evening advanced, the storm grew worse. I never expected to see daylight again. When a great wave swept above our heads, it had a sound as if the sea was closing over us. We slept none all night. Sandford is said to have been so convinced that they were all about to die that he put a message in a bottle and threw it overboard. Has had a farewell letter to the family in it, and that bottle did get to Scotland, But it looks like by the time the family received it, they knew that Sandford, David, and Henry had all gotten to Canada safely. Yet that was a long trip though. That was a five week long trip, so after this we think we're gonna die night. They still had four more weeks at sea to probably white knuckle it through the entire journey, and then after landing in Quebec City, the three young men had another three weeks of travel ahead of them. They boarded a steamship to what was at the time called Upper Canada that would eventually be Ontario, and that was to the city of Peterborough. They're Fleming found work with a surveyor named Richard Birdsall. Fleming needed to be certified as a surveyor in Canada to work on his own, and that was going to take some money and some time and some experience, and to help cover his basic expenses, he took sidework in map making jobs so that he could bring in extra money. He drew maps of various municipalities, including Peterborough, Hamilton, Cobourg, and Toronto. And it was also in Toronto that he moved into a new job working for a surveyor named John Stouton Dennis. Finally, on April nine, Fleming got his Canadian Surveyors ortification. Almost immediately after being certified, Fleming joined with other surveyors they formed the Canadian Institute in Toronto. This was intended as a professional organization for surveyors, engineers and architects. The society was founded in June of eighteen forty nine, but it didn't get the membership and structure that was needed to be recognized as a professional society. Fleming was not willing to let the group fall apart, so he reorganized it as a scientific society and remained involved with it in the fifteen years that he lived in Toronto. He also spearheaded the group's production of its periodical, which was just titled Canadian Journal. Two professional achievements marked Fleming's life in eighteen fifty one. First, the map of Toronto that he had worked on with John Stotton Dennis, which was the last of those map projects that he had done as sidework, was published, and then he designed the first Canadian postage stamp. He sometimes credited with making the beaver like the landmark animal of Canada and their unofficial mascot at that point. In eighteen fifty two, Sandford Fleming started working for the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Union Railroad as an assistant to Frederick William Cumberland. He had been one of his collaborators and setting up the Canadian Institute. They're working relationship, though, was really not good. Fleming became increasingly irritated with Cumberland, who often took a lot of side jobs that split his attention off from their railroad work. Things became so heated between them that Cumberland fired Fleming in eighteen fifty five, but Fleming felt that his supervisor had been the one who was in the wrong, and he went to the railroad's leadership to complain. The result of this seemed like a win for Fleming. He was given Cumberland's job, but Cumberland was on the railways board of directors, and over the next few years the two of them just kept clashing more and more. Fleming was ultimately the one who lost in their disputes. Yeah, there was a particularly contentious argument about pay that he really really thought Cumberland was responsible for and he did not win that one, and it really stung. And as that conflict between Fleming and Cumberland had continued to grow, Fleming had been allowed to stay with the railroad as an employee that had become the Northern railway at that point, but he was also allowed with permission to take side jobs. This was different for him and that he had gotten permission to do this, whereas Cumberland was just taking jobs whenever he wanted, so he saw it as a different situation. And Fleming had also started his own private firm with a colleague named Collingwood Schreiber. The two of them designed the Palace of Industry for Toronto in eighteen fifty eight. If you look at photos of this particular structure, it probably looks very familiar because it was based on Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace created for London's Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one, which we have talked about on the show before. Fleming continued his railway work for decades. He thought it was important to expand the railroads, and in particular to establish a transcontinental railway. Fleming duet plans for various very ambitious railway projects and lobbied the government both in Canada and in Britain for funding for these projects. Initially, he struggled to get approvals, but he was making a name for himself in the process. When it became really an obvious and pressing need for a railway to connect Canada's continental colonies to the maritime colonies. Sanford Fleming was the obvious choice to everybody to become the chief surveyor for the project. He was given that job in eighteen sixty three, and in eighteen sixty seven he was promoted to Engineer in chief for the Intercolonial Railway. And despite the various conflicts, he was growing quite successful. And as that success grew, Fleming wisely invested in real estate that not only expanded his wealth, but it also made some strategic sense for his work. He wasn't like buying speculating on real estate. He was buying basically land for himself in various places. He had moved to Ottawa in eighteen sixty nine. That was a move that was pretty necessary because he needed to be closed to federal government offices for the work he was doing in In eighteen seventy four, he also bought a home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so that when he traveled there for work on the ongoing Maritimes project, he would have a home base. And he also, as had been planned, moved his family over to Canada and settled them in Halifax. We'll pause here for a quick sponsor break, and when we come back, we'll talk about the ways that Sanford Fleming came into conflict with his colleagues, which, based on the conflict so far, seems a little unsurprising they would continue. Fleming, who was known to be obstinate but also often right, continued to butt heads with various peers in the industry. This seems to have pretty much always been a case of Fleming being certain that he knew better than the other party what was genuinely best for any given project. For example, when commissioners of the National Railway wanted to use timber for the construction of bridges as part of the Intercolonial Railway project, Fleming was adamant that they should be using steel and stone instead, and he went right up the chain of command in Ottawa government to make that case. Fleming got his way, and as a consequence, those structures were far sturdier and had longer life than was projected had the bridges been built with timber. This, of course, seems pretty obvious now, but in the late eighteen sixties the cost difference was so significant that it was considered a better idea by a lot of people to use Timber Sandford fleming approach, which also involves some new engineering techniques that he was pioneering, resulted in bridges that were strong enough and with enough longevity that they actually cost less to maintain over the long term. Even though he was having a proven track record, the railways kept seeing Fleming as a problem. After he became the chief engineer on the Pacific Railway. Fleming was very outspoken about his ideals, and a friend of his, Reverend George Grant, even published a book detailing the reverence travels with Fleming as he made his surveys. That book was the best seller. It's noted as giving a lot of insight into the railroads and its benefits to the general public, but the railroad did not appreciate moves like that. The railroad found Fleming's constant willingness to just share his views with the public to be a problem. He worked for the railroad, but he wasn't approved to be a spokesman for the railroad, and that created issues as his outspokenness made him the face of the railroads to the public. He was let go in May of eighteen eighty with a retirement severance of thirty thousand dollars. This is one of those things that I think if you've never worked in a corporate structure, you might be like, why shouldn't he? But if there are always people, I mean, it would be like me if I just started shooting my mouth off about the way like our company runs part of its business, and they would be like, Holly, that's not your business, shut up, um, And that would be valid because it's not my business. Every company I've worked for has had rules about like what kind of thing you're not, whether you're allowed to speak on behalf of the company, and if you are allowed, there's still a bunch of rules about it. He may have been the expert, but he was a stracy just said, not designated as a spokesman. So for him to just go blab stuff all the time was really problematic. But just four years after this devastating, essentially firing, they framed in as a retirement and he got severance, but he had really been fired of Four years later, Fleming, who had actually continued to have a stake in the Canadian Pacific Railway, became director of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had purchased shares in the Hudson's Bay Company. That company had transferred massive land holdings to the Canadian government in the eighteen seventies. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company was incorporated in eighteen eighty one by Act of Parliament, and so he was connected to all of this by virtue of having had those shares. Fleming had served in a role as resident Canadian director with Hudson's Bay, and he applied for the Canadian Pacific Railway director position in eighty three and got it. So, if you're thinking I thought this episode was about time zones, why have we been talking about railroads this whole time, it's because the railroad work is directly tied to the establishment of standardized time. As a career railroad man who traveled a lot, Fleming had a deep appreciation for how tricky and can using it could be to reconcile the local time and whatever place that was he were traveling. And when it came to running an entire unified transportation system had to go in and out of a variety of places that all kept their own local time, this whole task was a huge headache. You can see where someone building a railroad would be like wait, but what time is it where this station is, Well, it's seventeen minutes later than at the previous station, Holly, oh Okay. Even before he had been let go from the railroad in eighteen eighty, Fleming was taking on new roles outside of the industry. In eighteen seventy nine, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario asked him to become chancellor. That kind of made him the spokesperson for science and professional education for the school. He was really active in that position for the rest of his life and helped to establish the School of Mining and Agriculture there, and he lobbied for financial support for the university science programs. Also in eighteen seventy nine, Daniel Wilson reinstated Fleming at the Canadian Institute. Wilson, like Fleming, thought there should be standardized time. Because Fleming was already seen as a scientific authority by both the public and by a lot of his peers. All of these developments coming at the same time really made the late eighteen seventies the right moment for Fleming to make a case for a standardized time around the world. There were two different and separately prepared reports that were published in eighteen seventy nine about the problem of their not being a standardized time. One of those was written by Fleming, the other was written by chief of the United States Weather Service, Cleveland Abbey. Fleming read his report in front of the Canadian Institute, and then it went to the Governor General and then up to the Colonial Office. Throughout its movement and its distribution, the reception to this paper was extremely good. Everyone agreed that something needed to be done to get people on one unified system. Abby was also getting positive reactions to his paper, which he first presented to the American Meteorological Society. His impetus for writing this report was a series of observations on the Northern Lights, and because of a lack of an agreed upon meantime, reports from different places were almost impossible to reconcile to compile actual data. While Fleming wanted to help the train industry, Abby wanted to create a stronger guideline for time based science reporting. But once Abby and Fleming realized that each of them had written on this subject and had also used very similar ideas about how to accomplish a global system of time, they didn't do what you might expect if you've listened to previous episodes featuring scholars who have similar ideals, and honestly, if you've listened to the earlier part of this episode about how uh kind of argumentative that Fleming could be. They did not have a fight about it. They joined forces. The two men had a lot of connections throughout North America and Europe. They had these connections in both government and the scientific communities. They knew if they widened those connections and if they lobbied for the adoption of time standards as a team, they could have a really wide net of influence. Yeah, it was like, you have a whole group of people that you con curry favor with. I also have a different group of people. What if we put these all together? How big will our influence be? Now? Just to be clear, these papers that came out that same year did not just spring up out of the blue. Both of these men and others had been working on this idea and writing about it for some time before eighteen seventy nine. Usually people will point to eighteen seventy six, when Fleming had published a paper called Terrest Real Time, which opened with quote, the question to which I proposed to direct attention is not purely English in its interest, or indeed limited to any particular country or continent. It is a question which concerns all nations in common, and it is probably of less importance to the inhabitants of the British Isles than to colonists and those who live in continental countries. It went on to say, quote, within a comparatively recent period, the human race has acquired control over a power which already has in a remarkable degree changed the condition of human affairs. The application of steam to locomotion by land and water has given an enormous stimulus to progress throughout the world, and with the electric telegraph as an auxiliary, has somewhat rudely shaken customs and habits which have been handed down to us from bygone centuries. We still cling, however, to the system of chronometry inherited from a remote antiquity, notwithstanding difficulties and inconveniences which are constantly met in every part of the world, but which are so familiar to us that they are not regarded or are silently endured. It's a very long winded way to say you don't have to miss your trains all the time. We can miss this. We don't have to keep doing it this way just because the way we've the way we've done it for so long. Yeah. Fleming's work on this subject was more extensive than Abby's, which is why he is largely credited with the idea of creating and championing standard time. He was also, as we have said, very outspoken, so his name became the one more recognized as the leader of the effort to get a time system adopted. Both of them basically had this idea to set up twenty four time zones around the world to match the number of hours in a day, and to divide the circumference of the equator by twenty four to establish those zones. Fleming had given an example of the issues of local timekeeping for travelers in his eighteen seventy six paper, one that seems taken from his own life experience and his intimate knowledge of train travel. Quote. To illustrate the points of difficulty, let us first take the case of a traveler in North America. He lands, let us say, at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and starts on a railway journey through the eastern portions of Canada. His route is over the Intercolonial and Grand Trunk Lines. He stops at St. John, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. At the beginning of the journey, he sets his watch by Halifax time. As he reaches each place in succession, he finds a considerable variation in the clocks by which the trains are run, and he discovers that at no two places is the same time used. Between Halifax and Toronto. He finds the railways employing no less than five different standards of time. If the traveler remained at any one of these cities referred to, he would be obliged to alter his watch in order to avoid much inconvenience and perhaps not a few disappointments and annoyances to himself and others. If, however, he should not alter his watch, he would discover on reaching Toronto, but it was an hour in five minutes, faster than the clocks and watches in that city. You can see why this would be a big pain in the neck. We're going to talk about how all of this discussion about time finally turned into action in just a moment. But first we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going. Fleming's greatest asset in his work to standardize time was the American Society of Civil Engineers. Because so many of their members worked for various North American railroads, they all had a vested interest in fixing this problem. The society instituted a standing committee on time in one and Fleming was named as its chairman. He used this position to gather data from railroad workers and scientists, paying the research expenses for all of this out of his own pocket, and he found out pretty quickly that just about everyone in the railroad industry was in favor of his system. So though he was planning to take his findings to the US Congress for action, the North American railways acted independently before that could even happen, and cooperatively adopted his plan for one hour time zones on November three. So keep in mind that before this there were a hundred and forty four different localized times being used in the United States alone, so no wonder an entire industry that was trying to link all these places together was in favor of the plan. Simplified things for them considerably, yes, and after the trains adopted it, most of North America kind of followed suit, but even so there wasn't anything official in place at a government level, and other continents and countries were still kind of doing their own thing. But the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Meteorological Society were very vocal about the need for a wider adoption of this system, and members of those groups reached out to their contacts in Congress to push for action. President Chester A. Arthur also requested that some plan for a wider adoption be explored, and at the same time, the papers by both Fleming and Abbey were still being circulated to various other countries and support continued to grow. The results of this was that in October of eighteen eighty four, the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington, d C. This conference was called entirely with the goal of choosing one single global prime meridian is the position of zero degrees longitude, and that would be the base for all the other calculations. Twenty six nations participated in this Austria, Hungary, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hawaii, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Netherlands, Paraguay, Russia, San Domingo, Salvador, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, and Venezuela. Sometimes you'll see this reported as twenty two countries, because a lot of folks weren't there yet on the first day. I'm just gonna, in my head canon be it's because the time zones didn't exist and they had missed their connections. Admiral CRP. Rogers, who was one of the US delegates, was named President of the conference, and in his opening speech, Roger stated that quote in my own profession that of a seaman. The embarrassment arising from the many prime meridians now in use is very conspicuous, and in the valuable interchange of longitudes by passing ships at see, often difficult and hurried, sometimes only possible by figures written on a blackboard, much confusion arises, and at times grave danger. In the use of charts to this trouble is also annoying, and to us who live upon the sea, a common prime meridian will be a great advantage. I need not trespass further upon your attention, except to lay before you the subject we are invited to discuss the choice of a meridian to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world. The meridian that passed through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England had been in use by a lot of mariners and railroads for some time as the mean from which all distance and time was calculated. It was not a universally accepted prime meridian before this conference, Maps that were created in different countries would often put the zero longitude line through the capital of whatever country the map was made in. This kind of reminds me of our Gertis Mercatur episode talking about different places putting their north north not necessarily being up. It's got some similarities to that, and that is made calculating navigational roots and difficult. But it wasn't about time and selecting a prime meridian that would be agreed on internationally. The hope was that a universal time what eventually became known as Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, would be established. The minutes to this entire conference are readable online. There's a link to them at their Project Guttenberg location. In our show notes and a lot of it is pretty dry parliamentary procedure. But Pierre Jensen, one of the French delegates and also the director of the Physical Observatory of Paris, made the case that a prior gathering in Rome had seemed to only consider the geographical aspect of the meridian question and not the hydrographic needs of the world. He made an impassioned and lengthy speech in which he stated, quote, nearly all the astronomical tables used at the present time by the astronomers and the navies of the world are French and calculated for the Paris meridian. This is also a little bit related to our episode on the discovery of longitude, which you can check out for a kind of a companion piece to this. It also reminds me of the Esperanto episode when there were conferences about what if we adopted Esperanto as an international language, and France was like, but France is already the international language, or French is already the international language. Yes. Anyway, Jason went on to make it clear that he felt that France had always been brushed aside and considerations, and that he clearly saw the adoption of Greenwich as the international prime meridian as an unfair advantage to England that would just lead to future conflict. Arguing quote, I now hastened to say that I am persuaded that the proposition voted for at Rome was neither made nor suggested by England. But I doubt whether it would render a true service to the English nation if it be agreed to. An immense majority of the navies of the world navigate with English charts. That is true, and it is a practical complement to the great maritime activity of that nation. When this freely admitted supremacy shall be transformed into an official and compulsory supremacy, it will suffer the vicissitudes of all human power, and that institution, the common Meridian, which by its nature is of a purely scientific nature, and to which we would assure a long and certain future, will become the object of burning competition and jealousy among nations. It's an interesting thought. It will make England too important, and we will all quite about this forever. And this is also like it just came up in the Mercator episode also about like this map that's a standard puts Europe in the middle. It's the same kind of thought process about like the eurocentric city and in this case like the Britain specifics and eccentricity of all of it. Now, the French delegation did propose a resolution that would avoid this problem. That resolution read quote that the initial meridians 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. That resolution got only three votes of support from France, Brazil and San Domingo. It did not pass, but the conference did pass seven other resolutions, which read as follows. One 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 exists too. That the Conference proposes to the government's here represented, the adoption of the meridian passing through the center of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude three. That from this meridian, longitude shall be counted in two directions up to one eighty degrees east longitude being plus and west longitude minus four 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 other standard time. We're desirable. Five that this universal day is to be a mean solar day. It 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. Six. That the Conference expresses the hope that, as soon as maybe practicable, the astronomical and nautical days will be arranged everywhere to begin at mean midnight. Seven 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. So as you read that, you may have surmised that though the Conference established the prime meridian, it did not dictate its adoption in any real way. Each country could enact the system, however, and whenever it wished. In the sixteen years between the conference and the dawn of the twentieth century, most countries had officially adopted or officially transition to the resolutions agreed to by the International Meridian Conference, and that was still a very at your own pace approach, with some countries keeping their own time for a while or observing the standardization but not in any official way. Although the US had adopted it pretty completely by for instance, it wasn't actually cautified or mandatory until nineteen eighteen. Countries also weren't bound to adhere to the twenty four hour fifteen degrees of longitude plan where it didn't make sense. And if you look at a time zone map today, you'll see plenty of places where the time zone lines shift to follow the boundaries of different countries or states, or so that the line runs along a river, just to make things a little simpler in day to day life, and because you're probably wondering if you don't already know, some places use half hour time zones where it makes sense, and because the polls are where the lines of longitude all converge, they use the same coordinated universal time as Greenwich. Those time zone lines have shifted over the years as well. I think the most recent change was in so pretty recently. For example, Georgia was initially split by a time zone line when standardization was adopted. So very roughly speaking, if you know the state of Georgia, the western third of the state was in the Central time zone while the rest was in the Eastern time zone. And it actually wasn't until one that the State of Georgia was entirely moved into the Eastern time zone. Now for US folks, on March nineteenth eighteen, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Standard Time Act, making it law in the US. The Eastern, Central Mountain, Pacific, and Alaskan time zones were all established at that time. Those time zones are still the ones that we use. Although at that point time zones fell under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission. That work was shifted over to the Department of Transportation when it was founded in nineteen sixties six. There has been a lot of discussion recently about daylight savings time. There are other countries that do some shifting, but we're focusing on the U S since this has been a big issue lately. It was established in the US through that Standard Time Act. The idea was that if we shifted time around so that people were awake and active during most of the hours where there would be sunlight, less energy would be used. This was initially a World War One money saving measure that was new in terms of legislation, but it wasn't a new idea. Benjamin Franklin had pitched a similar idea in France as a way to save candles. Sometimes people credit him with inventing daylight savings time. That's not quite correct. His version was more about shifting your personal schedule, not changing the time by an hour. She's basically like just just say you wake up at ten instead of nine, or like he just wanted to change it. An entomologists from New Zealand named George Hudson had actually suggested a clock change to conserve daylight hours back in though after the war, daylight saving time went away until World War Two, when it was once again implemented. It was repealed again in It wasn't until the passing of the Uniform Time Act in nineteen sixty six that Congress made a national standard time, including the observance of daylight saving time. Although Hawaii and Arizona both opted out of daylight Saving time, with the exception of the navajun aation in the northeast of what's now Arizona. The Uniform Time Act also set daylight Saving time as a permanent annual shift, starting the last Sunday in April and ending the last Sunday in October. Of course, those dates have changed over the years. In March, the U. S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act. This wasn't an official vote, it was a verbal They all were like yes, and then there are some question marks if they understood it. Yeah, it's a thing called unanimous consent. And apparently afterwards some senators who were interviewed were like, I don't know what just happens. Right, This Sunshine Protection Act would is intended to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. It still needs to pass in the House of Representatives and it would then need to be signed into law by the President. This has certainly sent a lot of people into a frenzy because the bill has supporters and attractors on both sides of the political aisle, and if you are on social media at all, you have seen people very upset about it. In both directions, probably because we're recording this. The House will vote and all of these things will be handled before we published, because how stuff works. As for Sanford Fleming, he was one of the charter members of the Royal Society of Canada when it was established in eighteen eighty two, and he served as the organization's president in eight eight. He was given honorary doctorates from several schools and was knighted in eighteen nine seven. He died in Halifax in nineteen fifteen was buried in Ottawa. So yes, he barely did not live long enough to see the United States enact They're standardized time officially, although he saw it adopted pretty much everywhere in his lifetime. He also, I should say, as much as he sounds like a pill, he did die in the home of his daughter. He was surrounded by his loved ones. He was very adored by his family. So I think he was professionally, very stalwart in his beliefs. But he sounded like he was not a horrible man. I want to make that clear well. And as a person who can be very stubborn, especially if I think I'm right about something, I kind of get it. I have for listener mail a very very very late thank you, because yes, most everyone knows we've been staying home for this whole pandemic um. Our office is currently changing places. We are moving through different digs, which means that all of the stuff that goes to stuff you missed in history class goes to my desk. And last Tuesday, thirty two boxes arrived by courier on my front porch that the office manager had sent to my home. Oh my goodness of largely like books from publishers, but also a lot of gems among them. And one of those gems was a gift sent to us by our listener, Tom, who writes ms Fry, because he knew it was coming to to me essentially at the office. I hope this finds you and yours well. A greeting which takes on new meeting in today's world. Some time ago I mentioned the enclosed waffle maker to you on Twitter. You seemed delighted on the concept but dubious about the cost. After receiving mine and it languishing for months, I realized I would be unlikely to ever use it, so I decided to pass it on to someone who would make use of it. I hope it brings you some small measure of the pleasure and entertainment that you and Miss Wilson have brought to me over the years. May you and yours have days filled with joy, nights filled with peace, and lives filled with love. Sincerely, Tom, which is the sweetest note of all time. But this waffle maker, which I remember talking about on Twitter, makes waffles that look like legos and you can stack them together. Oh that's great. I love it. It is and it comes with two little trays that are like your base tray, so you can put your blocks and Um. When next you find yourself here in Atlanta, Tracy, we are going to have waffle feast to the likes of which has never been seen. So excited. We'll do savory waffles, We'll do sweet waffles. We'll make waffles with pumpkin. We'll make waffles with apple, We'll make waffles, I don't know, we make fish waffles. Whatever we want to do. It's gonna be a waffle party. Um. Thank you so much, Tom. I uh. It was one of the things in the midst of opening box after box of books from publishers, I was like, what is this magical discovery. He sent that back in January, So that's an indicator of how often I'm I've been in the office twice in the last two and a half years. That's amazing. I know. We have so many listeners who are so thoughtful and want to send us physical items. Let that be a lesson to you. I may or may not see them for a year or more. And at this moment, like Holly and I are both working Me pretty much exclusively remotely, Holly mostly too exclusively remotely. Oren's High. Our office is kind of between spaces at this moment with this move, So if you look up our address online, it's probably our old office that will come up in search results, And so if you send stuff there, you might never see it and they get lost forever. And I think we're still kind of working through what things will look like in the new space, which to my knowledge, we don't actually have access to yet. So you're thinking of sending a physical item, just hold off for a little bit so it doesn't go into just Mailimbo. Yes, but I'm very excited for waffles. Thank you, Tom. If you would like to write to us in a way that is almost guaranteed to get through. You can do that via email at History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also, of course find us on social media as Missed in History pretty much everywhere, and if you would like to subscribe to the show and you have not yet, no matter what time zone you're in, it's super duper easy. You can do that on the I heart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.