Fleming, Sandford. The Adoption of a Prime Meridian to be Common to All Nations. The Establishment of Standard Meridians for the Regulation of Time. Read Before the International Congress at Venice, September 1881, by Sandford Fleming,... 15pp Original wrappers, very very old vertical fold, some dusting. Good, solid copy. $500
Provenance: The Library of Congress Smithsonian Deposit, "11/27/81".
Fleming (an engineer who also designed the first Canadian postage stamp) was the force behind the adoption of a standardized time rendering system for worldwide use--a great innovation that was a 24-hour international clock based on the Greenwich meridian and which would replace the more-or-less local affair of keeping solar time. This "standard time" would be instituted (by the railroads!) in the U.S. and Canada on 18 November 1883.
The full text via Internet Archive: http://archive.org/stream/cihm_03125#page/n3/mode/2up
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