As regards the practices of railways among themselves: if the various
railways of America are joined and inosculated as they are in England,
it appears to me indispensable that they have one common standard
_among themselves_: say Washington Observatory time. But this is only
needed for the office-transactions between the railways; it may be
kept perfectly private; never communicated to the public at all. And I
should recommend this as the first step.
There will then be no difficulty in deducing, from these private
Washington times, the accurate local times at those stations (whose
longitude is supposed to be fairly well known, as a sailor with a
sextant can determine one in a few hours) which the railway
authorities may deem worthy of that honour; generally the termini of
railways. Thus we shall have a series of bases of local time, of
authoritative character, through the country.
Of such bases _we_ have two, Greenwich and Dublin: and they are
separated by a sea-voyage. In the U.S. of America there must be a
greater number, and probably not so well separated. Still it is
indispensable to adopt such a system of local centers.
No people in this world can be induced to use a reckoning which does
not depend clearly upon the sun.
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