Obscure inventor's biography worth taking a look | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
Obscure inventor's biography worth taking a look
Before railroad travel covered long distances in one day and the telegraph permitted coast-to-coast communication, the temporal variations caused by the sun's movement across the Earth mattered little.
By the late 1800s, almost every city in the world had its own local time.
In the larger cities, a "time ball" similar to the one that falls in Times Square on New Year's Eve was dropped at noon, allowing newly arrived travelers to set their watches.
Passengers arriving in Buffalo, N.Y., used one of three different times, depending on which railroad brought them. This created plenty of confusion and the need for an internationally adoptable standard of time.
One day in 1876, Sandford Fleming, a Canadian of Scottish birth, missed his train because of a misprinted schedule and spent the night thinking of a way to change how we tell time.
Fleming became the primary architect of Standard Time; both he and his creation are the subject of Clark Blaise's 16th book, "Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time" (Pantheon, 256 pages, $24).
"It can be said that the adoption of standard time was as necessary for commercial advancement as the invention of the elevator was for modern urban development," Blaise writes.
And, as he frequently repeats, throughout the late 19th century "time was in the air."
Although the book describes how telling time was simplified, its unconventional organization is anything but simple.
Ironically, it is not chronological. At times, the story follows a circuitous path whose next turn only Blaise can predict.
But it works, because Blaise's precision, consistency and sincere curiosity never allow his digressions to become irrelevant or lead the reader astray.
Clever and often obscure references turn up.
Within three consecutive pages, Blaise quotes a passage from the journal of Virginia Woolf's father, provides the test questions Fleming wrote for an undergraduate course in surveying and geodesy, and considers the notions of time expressed by quantum physics and special relativity.
"Time Lord" is an engaging and stimulating glimpse of an obscure man, his important accomplishment and the era in which he lived. It's also a welcome departure from the conventional biography.
BUFFALO SANDFORD FLEMING RAILROAD TRAVEL TIMES SQUARE NEW YORK FLEMING PANTHEON CLARK BLAISE USD NEW YEAR'S EVE ARCHITECT VIRGINIA WOOLF
Obscure inventor's biography worth taking a look | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
Obscure inventor's biography worth taking a look
Before railroad travel covered long distances in one day and the telegraph permitted coast-to-coast communication, the temporal variations caused by the sun's movement across the Earth mattered little.
By the late 1800s, almost every city in the world had its own local time.
In the larger cities, a "time ball" similar to the one that falls in Times Square on New Year's Eve was dropped at noon, allowing newly arrived travelers to set their watches.
Passengers arriving in Buffalo, N.Y., used one of three different times, depending on which railroad brought them. This created plenty of confusion and the need for an internationally adoptable standard of time.
One day in 1876, Sandford Fleming, a Canadian of Scottish birth, missed his train because of a misprinted schedule and spent the night thinking of a way to change how we tell time.
Fleming became the primary architect of Standard Time; both he and his creation are the subject of Clark Blaise's 16th book, "Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time" (Pantheon, 256 pages, $24).
"It can be said that the adoption of standard time wa
s as necessary for commercial advancement as the invention of the elevator was for modern urban development," Blaise writes.
And, as he frequently repeats, throughout the late 19th century "time was in the air."
Although the book describes how telling time was simplified, its unconventional organization is anything but simple.
Ironically, it is not chronological. At times, the story follows a circuitous path whose next turn only Blaise can predict.
But it works, because Blaise's precision, consistency and sincere curiosity never allow his digressions to become irrelevant or lead the reader astray.
Clever and often obscure references turn up.
Within three consecutive pages, Blaise quotes a passage from the journal of Virginia Woolf's father, provides the test questions Fleming wrote for an undergraduate course in surveying and geodesy, and considers the notions of time expressed by quantum physics and special relativity.
"Time Lord" is an engaging and stimulating glimpse of an obscure man, his important accomplishment and the era in which he lived. It's also a welcome departure from the conventional biography.
BUFFALO SANDFORD FLEMING RAILROAD TRAVEL TIMES SQUARE NEW YORK FLEMING PANTHEON CLARK BLAISE USD NEW YEAR'S EVE ARCHITECT VIRGINIA WOOLF