By the new system, railroad towns would have a great advantage in that
they could obtain their time with greater precision from the railroad
clocks, which are regulated by signals from astronomical observatories.
Inland towns having no observatories or telegraphs would of course, as
they do now, obtain their time as best they could from adjoining cities.
In some places there would still have to be two standards, as in
railroad centers; but there never need be more than two, and as these
two will always be exactly one hour apart, the adjustment of working
hours, business hours, school hours, etc., is a problem involving
nothing more than the addition or subtraction of an hour.
The Geodetic Congress which met in Rome a few weeks since, and in which
the United States was officially represented by General Cutts, of the
Coast Survey, passed, unanimously, resolutions urging the adoption
of this system for the whole world, with the meridian of Greenwich,
as it always has been and is now for all nautical calculations, the
universal standard. A compliance with this recommendation would reduce,
with our present time-pieces, the time of the world to twelve standards
(our watches and clocks merely repeating themselves after crossing the
180th meridian), and enable a man to “circumnavigate the globe,” and
always have correct time without once changing the minute-hand of his
watch.