Radio Script #755

Little Talks on Common Things

February 11, 1968

On this program I have frequently referred to the confusion caused when the railroads had different gauges, and what improvement was made when all except the few narrow-gauge lines adopted the standard width of 4 feet 8t inches. For instance, right here in Waterville there took place the Battle of the Gauges, bitter competition between the Androscoggin and Kennebec, that had the very wide gauge of 5 feet 6 inches, and the Somerset and Kennebec with its 4 feet 8t inch width.

Although I have indeed talked often about the coming of standard gauge, I don’t recall that I have ever told you the full story of the coming of standard time which seems so natural to us today that it is hard to realize that our nation did not adopt it until more than a hundred years after the Declaration of Independence. It was indeed 1883 before standard time was effective throughout the United States.

It was the railroad that eventually brought standard time just as it brought standard gauge. As long as people did not journey far from home on the land, local time was of little inconvenience.

Time at sea could be adjusted to observations of the sun by navigational methods, but every town or city in the United States once had its own local time, and some of the differences were absurdly minute. Although local time at Albany differed only one minute from local time in New York City, both places insisted that their own was the only correct time. A traveler from Portland, Maine to Buffalo, N.Y. not only passed through numerous local times en route, but to crown the confusion found different times recognized in Buffalo itself. In the Buffalo station, when the New York Central R.R. clock showed exactly noon, the Lake Shore R.R. clock in the same room showed 11:25. Across the street the City Hall clock stood at 11:40, while the traveler’s own watch, still on Portland time, told him it was 12:15. The same confusion prevailed allover the nation. Each railroad had its own variety of what was called “railroad time”, based on the local time of its principal city. In each town or city local time was presumably based on the sun’s noon mark at that particular place, and was therefore called “sun time”.

When the movement got under way for standard time, it met with the same kind of resistance that was later encountered by the adoption of Daylight Saving Time. People regarded “sun time” as “God’s time”, and it was an act of religious heresy to make any change. What people could not understand is that twelve o’clock noon is not fixed and immovable by solar observation. Astronomical noon varies slightly every day. In the second week of February in New England a local time clock indicated an afternoon half an hour longer than the forenoon, and in November the same clock indicated just the opposite.

When the change finally came the New York Tribune commented: “The problem was to unclinch popular notion from the fast hold on local time. The change struck at all popular habits of thinking about time. Only the convenience of the fast growing system of railroads made the change possible.”

The man who deserved principal credit for bringing about the much needed change was Charles F. Dowd, a school teacher of Saratoga, N.Y. For 35 years he was principal of the Temple Grove Ladies Seminary in that fashionable racing town. He was an eighth generation descendant of Henry Dowd who had come to Connecticut with the Guilford Colony in 1639. An ardent believer in orderliness and methods of avoiding confusion, Dowd was disturbed by the numerous differences in local time. After the Civil War business and industry in the North progressed so fast, and the expanding railroads enabled what had once been long journeys to be tremendously shortened, the confusion caused by local times became intolerable. But so strong was local pride and custom that it took more than ten years of persistent effort for Dowd and his followers to bring about the change.

Dowd at first conceived of one uniform time for the whole United States, but he soon found that the nation was too large for that. Then he thought of hour divisions, the minute hands of all clocks to be kept alike, but the hour hand to change by one hour with every 15 degrees of longitude. Thus Dowd planned for four time divisions or zones across the country.

Although supported by leading railroad officials, Dowd’s plan was not immediately acceptable to the rail lines. Many railroads crossed the proposed boundary divisions, and each road wanted a single time zone for its entire system. Dowd first mentioned his plan at a convention of trunk line railroads in New York City in 1869. In 1870 he published a map showing the easternmost zone with the uniform time of Washington, D.C. The rest of the nation was divided with three other zones, beginning respectively at the 90th, the 105th and the 120th degrees of longitude.

In 1872 the Travelers Official Railroad Guide announced: “The question of standard national time was referred to a committee of the Western and Southern Railroad Association to confer with a similar committee of the New England Association, at a joint meeting to be held in Cleveland on July 9. Prof. Dowd of Saratoga will then present the views of which he is such an able exponent.”

There was considerable debate about just where the zone lines should be placed. Dowd insisted on starting at the 75th meridian as the basis for the eastern zone, because it was best adapted to marking at intervals the other sections and would keep all four in exact uniformity to established meridians of longitude.

The time had not yet come, however, for the reform to go into effect. The investigating committee pointed out that most railroad passengers journeyed only short distances and were little affected by changing local times. The committee did not sense any wide public demand for a change. They felt the best that could be expected was gradual adoption of the plan separately in particular regions.

In 1873, when Dowd conferred with railroad interests in Chicago, he had to admit that the public did not yet really appreciate the disadvantages of the complicated time system then existing. Dowd predicted, however, that people would not indefinitely put up with the inconvenience.

Matters dragged along until 1877, when official time in New York City was designated by dropping a ball from a high signal staff exactly at noon. That action caused Dowd to publish a circular called “The Railway Superintendent’s Standard Time Guide”. In its preface Dowd said: “The important object of the author is to keep the subject of railway standard time before superintendents until some system shall be devised which will so far meet the needs of all roads as to be generally adopted.”

By 1879 popular sentiment had definitely turned toward the idea of standard time, leading societies, especially the Society for the Advancement of Science, recommended it.

Meanwhile other persons interested in the subject were presenting an even more ambitious plan — standard time for the entire world. Sir Stanford Fleming, Engineer-in-Chief of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, read a paper on “Time Reckoning” before the Canadian Institute in Toronto. He discussed the different time measures used in various parts of the world, and the confusion that resulted. He advocated a uniform system that he called “cosmopolitan time”. The meridian of zero would become the starting point, and the day would change at midnight on that meridian. All clocks in the world would indicate the same time, but the various clock dials would show its divergence from local time, which would not be strictly local, but adjusted by one hour at each 15th meridian.

So far as the U.S. was concerned, the railroads clearly held the key to the situation. By 1880 they had formed a national body called the “American Rail road Association”. For several years various officials had talked about working out uniform timetables at least for given areas. Finally, at the meeting of the Association in 1881, the secretary, W.F. Allen, was authorized to work out a definite plan and report at the next annual meeting in 1882.

Allen sent out letters to railroad executives allover the country, asking for suggestions, but making it clear that some definite action would certainly be taken when he reported in 1882. The suggestions he received all acknowledged the need for standard time, but they varied as to details. Some wanted the eastern zone fixed at the time of Washington. D.C.; others at the exact line of the 75th meridian. Some wanted complete abandonment of local time; others wanted the railway time tables to show both standard and local time. Others preferred a single standard time for the whole country, with the use of two sets of hands on watches and clocks, one set for local and the other for standard time. Allen was wrong in his prediction of action at the meeting in 1882. At that time what was known as the “fast train war” was at its height. Roads. especially from New York and Washington to the west, were in the midst of intense competition to provide the fastest service. That rivalry turned attention temporarily away from the campaign for standard time. But a year later, in 1883, “fast train war” was over, and the time had at last arrived for Charles Dowd’s ten year campaign to reach a successful end. The Association adopted resolutions pledging 78,000 miles of railroad to run trains by agreed standards and so publish their next schedules.

The plan went into effect on November 18, 1883. The issue of the New York Tribune for November 19 heralded the change. The Tribune said: “There was a general resetting of clocks and watches in this city yesterday to conform local time to the new standards based on the 75th meridian. Changes were made in the clocks of most hotels, churches and stores. A large crowd assembled before noon near the Western Union Telegraph building, and hundreds of watches were changed when the new noon hour was announced.”

The Tribune continued: “To the untiring efforts of Charles Dowd the American people owe this significant change. Still in the prime of life, this man has lived to see the success of his persistent campaign.”

It is ironical to note how this man, who did so much to help the railroads achieve uniform time. met his death. He was killed by a train at a railroad crossing in his own town of Saratoga in 1904. As one newspaper put it: “After a generation of effort to regulate the running time of locomotives. Charles Dowd met his death under a locomotive’s wheels.”

Year: 1968