TY  - BOOK
AU  - Bartky,Ian R
TI  - Selling the true time: nineteenth-century timekeeping in America 
SN  - 0804738742
PY  - 2000///]
CY  - Stanford, Calif.
PB  - Stanford University Press
KW  - Time
KW  - Systems and standards
KW  - United States
KW  - Railroads
KW  - Time standards
KW  - fast
KW  - Sociology
KW  - USA
KW  - Timestandards railroad time
KW  - Timekeeping
KW  - Timekeeper (general)
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-299) and index; pt. I. Employing Time (1801-1856) -- 1. True Time and Place -- 2. Running on Time -- 3. Telegraphing Time, Making History -- part II. Dispensing Local Time (1845-1875) -- 4. Introducing City Time -- 5. Antebellum Observatory Time Services -- 6. Lobbying for Time and New Technologies -- part III. Promoting a National View of Time -- 7. Abbe's Road: Uniform Time -- 8. Shaping a National Time Circuit -- 9. Gauging Time Accurately -- part IV. Conflict without Resolution (1879)̃ -- 10. Clashing over Time Bills -- 11. Inventing Standard Railway Time -- 12. A Failure in Time -- part V. Emerging American Technologies (1880-1889) -- 13. New Companies, Old Business -- 14. Two Instrument-Makers -- part VI. Finished and Unfinished Business (1888-1903) -- 15. The Time Peddlers -- 16. A Severe Blow to the Progress of Science -- Appendix: American Observatory Public Time Services
N2  - This book charts the transition from local to national timekeeping in nineteenth-century America. Prior to the railroads adoption of Standard Railway Time in 1883, America lacked any uniform system to coordinate times and time zones. Railroads were the first to establish time standards to govern their operations, since railway safety depended upon regulating train movement through precise timing. The railroads switch to standard time, indexed to the Greenwich meridian, inaugurated the modern era of public timekeeping and led directly to cities adopting Greenwich-indexed civil time zones. Despite the efforts of astronomers and Congressional supporters who argued for the necessity of a national system of time authorized by the federal government, the railroads' success with their own system blocked legislation for a national system of time until the First World War. By then, the US Naval Observatory's noon signal dominated the public's timekeeping
ER  -