Today in History: November 18
Time!
Upper Half of Clock, Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959
On November 18, 1883, four standard time zones for the continental U.S.A. were introduced at the instigation of the railroads. At noon on this day the U.S. Naval Observatory changed its telegraphic signals to correspond to the change. Until the invention of the railway, it took such a long time to get from one place to another that local "sun time" could be used. When traveling to the east or to the west, a person would have to change his or her watch by one minute every twelve miles.
When people began traveling by train, sometimes hundreds of miles in a day, the calculation of time became a serious problem. Operators of the new railroad lines realized that a new time plan was needed in order to offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals.
Since every city was using a different time standard, there were over 300 local sun times to choose from. The railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.
Fast Mail, Northern Pacific Railroad, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., James White, producer, July or August 1897.
Inventing Entertainment: The Edison Companies
The fact remained that the different railroad lines were using time schedules that varied from each other and from the cities they passed through, causing considerable befuddlement. Where railroad lines using different time zones intersected with each other, or with cities using different time standards, travelers were especially confused.
During the mid-nineteenth century, people throughout the world had experimented with methods of standardizing their clocks. In 1830 the U.S. Naval Observatory was created to cooperate with Great Britain's Greenwich Observatory to determine time based on astronomical observations. Accurate sea navigation based on the calculation of latitude and longitude, depended on accurate timekeeping.
Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph made it possible to coordinate time signals over long distances. In the 1840s, the Royal Greenwich Observatory established an official standard time for all of England, Scotland, and Wales. The U.S. Naval Observatory was responsible for keeping official time in the United States.
Burlington Route, Rand McNally and Company.
For Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, 1897.
Railroad Maps, 1828-1900
U.S. railway managers were the first to adopt a plan to simplify calculation of time for the convenience of travelers within the continental United States. They agreed that four time zones would be adopted: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific Time. Local times would no longer be used by the railroads. The American Railway Association obtained the cooperation of city governments served by the railroads. The U.S. Naval Observatory agreed to make the change.
At twelve o'clock noon on November 18, 1883, as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was transmitted, the U.S. Naval Observatory began signaling the new time standard. Authorities in major cities and managers of the railroad reset their clocks. All over the United States and Canada, people changed their clocks and watches in synchronization with their zone's standard time. In one moment the many different standards of time that had caused conflict and confusion, were resolved into four simple standards.
A year later, on November 1, 1884, the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. agreed to establish international zones according to the same system. GMT was considered the "time zero," and the twenty-four standard meridians marked the centers of the zones. The International Dateline was placed along the 180 degree meridian in the Pacific Ocean. Around the world, clocks were reset to reflect the new system of timekeeping. By the time travelers began to rely on the airplane for travel, they had become accustomed to the system. Today, travelers think little of crossing more than one time zone in a trip of a few hours.
Taking the Time, Brooklyn Navy Yard, circa 1890-1901.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
Setting Clock, Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959
Clock and Sign in Tavern. Smuggler's Notch, Vermont, Rothstein, Arthur, photographer, September 1937.
FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945
- Browse the collection, Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896 to see photographs of modes of transportation in countries around the world shortly after the international standard time zones were established. Photographer William Henry Jackson's documented the trip taken by officials of the WTC to investigate the possibilities of expanding international trade.
- Visit the National Institute of Standards exhibition, A Walk Through Time to find out more about the history of standardized time.
- The Progressive Era was characterized by the fever for innovation. Standardized time was one of the "causes" advanced by the forward-thinking reformers of the period. Search the Today in History Archive on progressive and reform to find more features on this era. Examples include features on the Bull Moose Party, William Jennings Bryan, the Anthracite Coal Strike, the eight-hour work day, and on reformers Grace Abbott, Jane Addams, and Emma Goldman.
- Search the Today in History Archive on railroad or train to find features on the early railroads, such as the first regularly scheduled passenger train, the first train robbery, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the Oahu Railway, and the Florida East Coast Railway.
- View an image of Samuel F. B. Morse's colored sketch of a railway signal telegraph, circa 1838, in Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years.
- The American Memory sound recordings include a wealth of "train songs." Search the following collections on train and railroad to listen to many examples:
- Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
- The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
- California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties
- Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941
- Fort Valley State College Folk Festival
"Fast Train," performed by John Lee Thomas, harmonica, 1941.
Fort Valley State College Folk Festival
Real Audio Format
MP3 Format
wav Format
- Search the collection Railroad Maps, 1828-1900 to find more maps of the railroad routes.
- Visit the following collections to read first-hand experiences of people who followed the railroad lines west:
- Search the American Memory image collections on the terms railroad or train to discover more photographs.
Sun Clock at Meridian Hill Park, Washington, D.C.,
Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959
The Daguerreotype
Portrait of a Latch Maker, circa 1850-1860.
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1864
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, inventor of the first practical process of photography, was born near Paris, France on November 18, 1789. A professional scene painter for the opera, Daguerre began experimenting with the effects of light upon translucent paintings in the 1820s. In 1829, he formed a partnership with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to improve the process Niépce had developed to take the first permanent photograph in 1826-1827. Niépce died in 1833.
After several years of experimentation, Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography, naming it after himself—the daguerreotype. In 1839, he and Niépce's son sold the rights for the daguerreotype to the French government and published a booklet describing the process.
The daguerreotype gained popularity quickly; by 1850, there were over seventy daguerreotype studios in New York City alone. The Library's Daguerreotype Collection consists of more than 600 carefully preserved daguerreotypes. Items of particular interest include a series of portraits of African Americans who emigrated to Liberia under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, a series of Occupational Photographs, a collection of Architectural Scenes and Outdoor Views, and the architectural daguerreotypes of John Plumbe. The majority of the daguerreotypes in the collection are portraits including the Library's earliest photograph of Abraham Lincoln.
United States Capitol, Washington, D.C., John Plumbe, photographer, circa 1846.
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1864
Man Stranded on Rocks in the Niagara River, Platt D. Babbitt, photographer, 1853.
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1864
- America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1862 also includes the largest collection in existence of daguerreotypes from the studio of Mathew Brady. Brady is most famous for his photographs of the Civil War, many of which are featured in Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865.
- The Special Presentation Mirror Images: Daguerreotypes at the Library of Congress provides an introduction to the Library's daguerreotype collection. See the Timeline of the Daguerreian Era to learn more about the period.
- Descriptions of the process developed by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and the equipment used by daguerreotype photographers are included in The Daguerreotype Medium; to find them, scroll down to the appropriate headings.
- Search the Today in History Archive on photographer to find features on Dorothea Lange, Mathew Brady, Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, and Samuel Herman Gottscho and William Schleisner.
- For even more daguerreotypes, see two online exhibitions:
- Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype from the National Museum of American Art
- Daguerreotypes at Harvard from the extensive photograph collections of Harvard University and Radcliffe.
- In the late 1850s, with the development of new photographic methods, use of the daguerreotype waned. Search the following collections on the years between 1826 and 1859 to learn about other Daguerreian era forms of art and entertainment.
