BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO

Subject: RE: BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 16 Dec 18 - 04:39 AM

Theoretically, 180deg longitude. In practice, the international date line. It moves east or west to avoid going directly through land and thus splitting a country in two. For those countries close to the line, they choose which side depending if their trade is generally with the Americas or Asia/Australasia. Some countries have switched sides more than once as their trading relationships change.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO
From: DMcG
Date: 16 Dec 18 - 05:10 AM

That's how we have things set up now. But in 1890-ish when he wrote of the problem, many people did not realise there was even an issue. Sailors had, for a long time, but it did not impinge on most people's lives before fast communication and travel.

Subject: RE: BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO
From: DMcG
Date: 16 Dec 18 - 05:14 AM

Phrasing that differently, the international date line is how we solve the problem. Lewis Carroll's puzzle showed ordinary people - ie not sailors - that there was a problem in the first place.

Subject: RE: BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 16 Dec 18 - 06:52 AM

To the Victorians, "now" would be whatever time it was in Great Britain or, more specifically, in London. Greenwich, by definition, is where the East finishes and the West begins, so it would have been obvious that anything as strange as Tuesday becoming Wednesday, would happen on the opposite side of the world.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 18 - 12:03 PM

China has one time zone which makes high noon a relative experience.


When time is under extreme pressure do you suppose it has inertia?

Subject: RE: BS: Is a Stopped Clock Ever Right? HELL NO
From: Iains
Date: 16 Dec 18 - 01:20 PM

A problem was discovered when it came to running trains to a timetable.
Britain only unified time in 1840, when Railway time was the standardised time arrangement first applied by the Great Western Railway in England. "The development of railway networks in North America in the 1850s, India in around 1860, and in Europe, prompted the introduction of standard time influenced by geography, industrial development, and political governance.

The key goals behind introducing railway time were to overcome the confusion caused by having non-uniform local times in each town and station stop along the expanding railway network and to reduce the incidence of accidents and near misses, which were becoming more frequent as the number of train journeys increased."

Interestingly the great western introduced a very early telegraph system in 1838,although Samuel Morse patented a far superior system in 1837.