tries subject to English influence, 3 feet p or 3 feet 6 inches. The author recommends that the width of gauge best suited for adoption in constructing local lines will, with few exceptions, viz., in very thinly populated districts, where the gauge might be made 2 feet 6 inches, be found to be 3 feet 3 inches, and describes at length the economical advantages of this gauge as compared with that of the normal, viz., 4 feet 8 inches. In earthwork the great saving is due partly to the reduction of the formation width, but in hilly districts far more to the avoidance of heavy embankments and cuttings, through being enabled more closely to follow the natural surface of the ground, by the adoption of curves of very much sharper radius, and gradients of greater inclination. The author also demonstrates that with a gauge of 3 feet 3 inches the rolling stock can with equal ease travel over a curve of less than half the radius of the equivalent curve on the normal gauge, and that the proportion of dead load to useful load in the rolling stock, being diminished in the case of the reduced gauge, therefore the inclination of the gradients may be made steeper. The above considerations directly influence the area of land required, and a further saving under this head is effected by the avoidance of a severance, and a reduction in the length of road and steam, diversions, &c. Bridges and culverts are similarly reduced in cube, and in many instances their necessity avoided, and the saving extends to workshops, carriage and engine sheds. As regards the permanent way, the weight of the locomotives being only from 4 to 6 tons per axle, a rail weighing from 50 to 60 lbs. per yard suffices, and the sleepers are reduced from 8 feet 3 inches to a length of 5 feet three inches or 5 feet 11 inches, and are proportionately less in cross section. Р 4.8 1.445 about, and the molecular resistance to flexure will be as the squares of the corresponding dimenR 3'.3'2/1.000 2 sions, The author states that in England goods wagons capable of carrying 8 tons average a useful load of only 1 ton, and that, as regards passenger traffic, the number of persons actually carried is twenty-five for every one hundred seats provided. In France, as regards the goods traffic, the discrepancy is less marked, the average being 4 tons of dead weight to 1 ton of useful load; but the proportion of passengers is about the same as in England. In addition to the saving in dead-weight, the wagons of the 3 feet 3 inches gauge are also better adapted for a local traffic where the separate consignments are likely to be small in amount. The passenger carriages of the 3 feet 3 inches gauge may with safety be made 9 feet 2 inches wide, thus affording five seats in each transverse row. single central buffer is strongly recommended for narrow-gauge vehicles, as better adapted for sharp curves. It has been suggested that the normal gauge might be preserved, and at the same time the cost of construction in rough countries be reduced to a minimum, by adoptIn the rolling stock the advantage pro- ing sharp curves, worked with rolling cured by the adoption of the 3 feet 3 stock of the American bogie truck type, inches gauge, in diminishing the propor- but one great objection to this is the intion of the dead to the useful load, is crease in the dead-weight of the vehicles, demonstrated as follows. Supposing all the proportion being 8 to 1 (with a full the dimensions of the two rolling stocks carriage), as compared with 3 to 1 on the to be in the same proportion as the 3 feet 3 inches gauge. The objections to gauges, then the weight of the respective the break of gauge, on account of the wagons will be as the cube of the gauges trans-shipment, may be classified under A the heads of working expenses, delay, | and damage to goods. The first may be diminished to a cost of d. per ton, if proper arrangements are instituted. The question of delay is of little importance, as, where there is no break of gauge a day is usually lost when a truck has to pass from one system to another. With regard to damage, the higher classes of goods being as a rule in small consignments, they form only portion of a truck load, and therefore would, with an unbroken gauge, have to be transhipped at the junction; whereas, in the instance of coals and other minerals, coal, &c., their transhipment would, under this head, be of little import. Under present conditions, at the junction of two systems similar in gauge, a transhipment always takes place of incomplete loads, and, in addition, threefourths the amount of all merchandise arriving in full wagons. a The saving in cost of construction of line through an easy country is at least equal to the proportionate diminution of the gauge-viz., 33 per cent., increased in a rough country to 50 per cent. or 75 per cent. The following are the costs of a few narrow-gauge lines, compared with what they would have amounted to if constructed with the normal gauge: Had the Corsican railways been constructed to the normal gauge, it was estimated that they would have cost from three to four times the amount actually expended upon the 3 feet 3 inches gauge. In the Rio Grande (Denver) railway what the normal would have, and the the narrow gauge cost three-fifths of Livonia (Russian) railway, with a gauge of 3 feet 6 inches (1.067 meter), realized an economy of 40 per cent. on the estimate for the normal gauge. In conclusion, in adopting narrowgauge lines, the public should have every facility offered it for using them, including simplification of classes, stoppingplaces at the crossings of all important roads, and commissions should be given trict for the sale of tickets. In France to the hotel and shop-keepers of the disall the railways requiring the normal gauge have already been constructed, but there still remains an enormous length of narrow-gauge lines to be made, which, if carried out in an economical manner, would reduce the cost from £9,655 (150,000 fr.) to £12,172 per mile (200,000 fr. per kilometer) for the normal gauge, down to £3,218 or £5,150 per mile (50,000 per mile, or 80,000 per kilometer) for the 3 feet 3 inch gauge.-Memoires de la Société des Ingénieurs Civils, through Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. UNIVERSAL OR WORLD TIME. Lecture by W. H. M. CHRISTIE, F.R.S., Astronomer-Royal, at the Royal Institution, March 19, 1886. From "Nature." CONSIDERING the natural conservatism of mankind in the matter of time-reckoning it may seem rather a bold thing to propose such a radical change as is involved in the title of my discourse. But in the course of the hour allotted to me this evening, I hope to bring forward some arguments which may serve to show that the proposal is not by any means so revolutionary as might be imagined at the first blush. A great change in the habits of the civilized world has taken place since the old days when the most rapid means of conveyance from place to place was the stage coach, and minutes were of little importance. Each town or village then naturally kept its own time, which was regulated by the position of the sun in the sky. Sufficient accuracy for the ordinary purposes of village life could be obtained by means of the rather rude sun-dials which are still to be seen on influence of railways, the clocks of neighcountry churches, and which served to boring villages commonly differ by half keep the village clock in tolerable agree-an hour or more. The degree of exactiment with the sun. So long as the tude in the measurement of local time in members of a community can be consid- such cases may be inferred from the cirered as stationary, the sun would natu- cumstance that a minute hand is usually rally regulate, though in a rather imper- considered unnecessary. I have also perfect way, the hours of labor and of found that, in rural districts on the Consleep and the times for meals, which tinent, arbitrary alterations of half-anconstitute the most important epochs in hour fast or slow are accepted, not only village life. But the sun does not really without protest, but with absolute indifhold a very despotic sway over ordinary ference. life, and his own movements are charac- Even in this country, where more imterized by sundry irregularities to which portance is attached to accurate time, I a well-ordered clock refuses to conform. have found it a common practice, in outWithout entering into detailed explan- lying parts of Wales (where Greenwich ation of the so-called "Equation of Time," time is about 20 minutes fast by local it will be sufficient here to state that, time) to keep the clock half-an hour fast through the varying velocity of the earth by railway (i. e., Greenwich) time, or in her orbit, and the inclination of that about 50 minutes fast by local time. And orbit to the ecliptic, the time of apparent the farmers appeared to have no diffinoon, as indicated by the sun, is at certain times of the year fast, and at other times slow, as compared with 12 o'clock, or noon, by the clock. [The clock is supposed to be an ideally perfect clock, There is a further irregularity about going uniformly throughout the year, the sun's movements which makes him a the uniformity of its rate being tested very unsafe guide in any but tropical by reference to the fixed stars.] In other countries. He is given to indulging in a words, the solar day, or the interval from much larger amount of sleep in winter one noon to the next by the sun, is at than is desirable for human beings who certain seasons of the year shorter than have to work for their living, and cannot the average, and at others longer, and hibernate as some of the lower animals thus it comes about that by the accumu- do. To make up for this he rises at an lation of this error of going, the sun is, inconveniently early hour in summer, and at the beginning of November, more than does not retire to rest until very late at 16 minutes fast, and by the middle of night. Thus, it would seem that a clock February, 14 minutes slow, having lost of steady habits would be better suited 31 minutes, or more than half-an-hour, to the genius of mankind. culty in adapting their hours of labor and times of meals to a clock which, at certain times of the year, differed more than an hour from the sun. in the interval. In passing, it may be Persons whose employment requires mentioned as a result of this, that the daylight must necessarily modify their afternoons in November are about half-hours of labor according to the season of an-hour shorter than the mornings, the year, whilst those who can work by whilst in February the mornings are artificial light are practically independent half-an hour shorter than the afternoons. of the vagaries of the sun. Those who In view of the importance attached by some astronomers to the use of exact local time in civil life, it would be interesting to know how many villagers have remarked this circumstance. work in collieries, factories, or mines, would doubtless be unconscious of a difference of half-an-hour or more between the clock and the sun, whilst agriculturists would practically be unaffected by it, as they cannot have fixed hours of labor in any case. It is essential to bear these facts in mind when we have to consider the extent to which local time regulates the af- Having thus considered the regulating fairs of life, and the degree of sensitive influence of the sun on ordinary life ness of a community to a deviation of within the limits of a small community, half-an-hour or more in the standard we must now take account of the effect reckoning of time. My own experience is, of business intercourse between different that in districts which are not within the communities separated by distances which may range from a few miles to clock was of no practical consequence. half the circumference of our globe. So It is true that for some years both the long as the means of communication local and the railway times were shown were slow, the motion of the traveler on village clocks by means of two minute was insignificant compared with that due hands, but the complication of a dual to the rotation of the earth, which gives system of reckoning time naturally prous our measure of time. But it is other-duced inconvenience, and local time was wise now, as I will proceed to explain. gradually dropped. Similarly in France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, &c., uniform time has been carried by the railways throughout each country. It is noteworthy that in Sweden the time of the meridian one hour east of Greenwich has been adopted as the standard, and that local time at the extreme east of Sweden differs from the standard by about 36 minutes. Owing to the rotation of the earth about its axis, the room in which we now are is moving eastward at the rate of about 600 miles an hour. If we were in an express train going eastward at a speed of 60 miles an hour (relatively to places on the earth's surface), the velocity of the traveler due to the combined motions would be 660 miles an hour, whilst if the train were going westward it would be only 540 miles. In other words. if local time be kept at the stations, the apparent time occupied in traveling 60 miles eastward would be 54 minutes, whilst in going 60 miles westward it would be 66 minutes. Thus, the journey from Paris to Berlin would apparently take an hour and a half longer than the return journey, supposing the speed of the train to be the same in both cases. In Germany, under the influence of certain astronomers, the system of local time has been developed to the extent of placing posts along the railways to mark out each minute of difference of time from Berlin.. Thus, there is an alteration of one minute in time, reckoning for every ten miles eastward or westward, and even with the low rate of speed of German trains, this can hardly be an unimportant quantity for the engine-drivers and guards, who have to alter their watches one minute for every ten miles they have traveled east or west. This would seem to be the reductio ad absurdum of local time. But in countries of great extent and longitude, such as the United States and Russia, the time-question was not so easily settled. It was in the United States and Canada that the complication of the numerous time standards then in use on the various railways forced attention to the matter. To Mr. Sandford Fleming, the constructor of the InterColonial Railway of Canada, and engineer-in-chief of the Pacific Railway, belongs the credit of having originated the idea of a universal time to be used all over the world. In 1879 Mr. Fleming set forth his views on time-reckoning in a remarkable paper read before the Canadian Institute. In this he proposed the adoption of a universal day, commencing at Greenwich mean noon, or at midnight of a place on the anti-meridian of Greenwich, i. e., in longitude 180° from Greenwich. The universal day thus proposed would coincide with the Greenwich astronomical day, instead of with the Greenwich civil day, which is adopted for general use in this country. The American Metrological Society in the following year issued a report recomIn this country the difficulty as to the mending that, as a provisional measure, the time reckoning to be used on railways railways in the United States and Canada was readily overcome by the adoption of should use only five standard times, 4, 5, of Greenwich time throughout Great 6, 7, and 8 hours respectively later than Britain. The railways carried London Greenwich, a suggestion originally made (i. e., Greenwich) time all over the coun- in 1875 by Professor Benjamin Peirce. try, and thus local time was gradually This was proposed as an improvement on displaced. The public soon found that the then existing state of affairs, when it was important to have correct railway no fewer than seventy-five different local time, and that even in the west of Eng- times were in use on the railroads, many land, where local time is about twenty of them not differing more than 1 or 2 minutes behind Greenwich time, the dis- minutes. But the committee regarded cordance between the sun and the railway this merely as a step towards unification, and they urged that eventually one com- by an overwhelming majority of sailors mon standard should be used as railroad of all nations, being adopted for purposes and telegraph time throughout the North of navigation by the United States, GerAmerican Continent, this national stand-many, Austria, Italy, &c. Further, the ard being the time of the meridian 6 United States had recently adopted hours west of Greenwich, so that North Greenwich as the basis of their time American time would be exactly 6 hours reckoning, and this circumstance in itself later than Greenwich time. indicated that this was the only meridian on which the Eastern and Western Hemispheres were likely to agree. Thanks to the exertions of Mr. W. F. Allen, Secretary of the General Railway Time Convention, the first great practical step toward the unification of time was taken by the managers of the American railways on November 18, 1883, when the five time-standards above mentioned were adopted. Mr. Allen stated in October, 1884, that these times were already used on 97 per cent. of all the miles of railway lines, and that nearly 85 per cent. of the total number of towns in the United States of over 10,000 inhabitants had adopted them. I wish to call particular attention to the breadth of view thus evidenced by the managers of the American railways. By adopting a national meridian as the basis of their time-system, they might have rendered impracticable the idea of a universal time to be used by Europe as well as America. But they rose above national jealousies, and decided to have their time reckoning based on the meridian which was likely to suit the convenience of the greatest number, thus doing their utmost to promote uniformity of time throughout the world by setting an example of the sacrifice of human susceptibilities to general expediency. The difficulties in the way of an agreement between the two hemispheres may be appreciated by the remarks of the Superintendent of the American Ephemeris on Mr. Sandford Fleming's scheme for universal time (which was subsequently adopted in its essentials at the Washington Conference): "A capital plan for use during the millenium. Too perfect for the present state of humanity. See no more reason for considering Europe in the matter than for considering the inhabitants of the planet Mars. No, we don't care for other nations; can't help them, and they can't help us."* As a means of introducing universal time, it has been proposed by Mr. Sandford Fleming, Mr. W. F. Allen, and others, that standard times based on meridians differing by an exact number of hours from Greenwich should be used all over the world. In some cases it may be that a meridian differing by an exact number of half-hours from Greenwich would be more suitable for a country like Ireland, Switzerland, Greece, or New Zealand, through the middle of which such a meridian would pass, whilst one of the hourly meridians would lie alto Meanwhile Mr. Sandford Fleming's proposal had been discussed at the Geo-gether outside of it. graphical Congress at Venice in 1881, The scheme of hourly meridians, and at a meeting of the Geodetic Asso- though valuable as a step towards uniciation at Rome, in 1883. Following on form time, can only be considered a prothis a special conference was held at visional arrangement, and though it may Washington in October, 1884, to fix on a work well in countries like England, meridian proper to be employed as a France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, common zero of longitude and standard &c., which do not extend over more than of time-reckoning throughout the globe. one hour of longitude, in the case of As the result of the deliberations it was such an extensive territory as the United decided to recommend the adoption of States difficulties arise in the transition the meridian of Greenwich as the zero from one hour section to the next, which for longitude, and the Greenwich civil are only less annoying than those forday (commencing at Greenwich midnight merly experienced, because the number and reckoned from 0 to 24 hours) as of transitions has been reduced from the standard for time-reckoning. In seventy-five to five, and the change of making this selection the delegates were influenced by the consideration that the meridian of Greenwich was already used *Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, Toronto, No. 143, July, 1885, |