CLOCK TRICKERIES

Hokitika Guardian, 30 July 1930, Page 2

CLOCK TRICKERIES

WHAT’S THE TIME IN TJM-

BUCKTU?

So many questions have been asked concerning the time problems that it is perhaps, the simplest to reply to them in one general comprehensive note. Our time is merely a manmade thing instituted so that we all go to bed round about the midnight end of the clock, and get up round about the sixes, the sevens, the eights, or even the nines of tlie clock. When you travel from one place to another all manner of troubles start almost at once. If your watch remained set at its starting time and continued to keep good time, there would come a day when you went to Bed at the times you usually got. up and vice versa. Breakfast would be at dinner time, and tlie whole day would. be upset. For this reason ships alter their clocks regularly every day, so that wo may have the pleasure of clinging to our time standards.

Greenwich is. the father of time so far as we are concerned. Every place on the longitude of Greenwich sets its habits by Greenwich time. Midday at Greenwich is also midday at Akkra, on 1 the west coast of Africa, nearly midday at Timbticktu, and nearly midday ap Gough Island, in the South Atlantic (apart of course from lobal summer times nhd all that sort of .thing). As you go west or east from; the longitude of Greenwich the time will • alter either faster or slower than Greenwich,The way to remeriiiber which . is which is toy. the rhyme “"West Greenwich best ; East Greenwich least.” When it is midday at,Greenwich it is only time to get tip in - New -.York and 4 in . the morning in Vancouver. If you go east it will be tea time at Omsk and bed time in Japan. Further cast one comes to the troublesome date, line where one trespasses into another day. In theory roughly this line runs right through the Pacific on the 180th longitude, passing close to East Cape iu New. Zealand. In practice it, has been found more serviceable to peimit adjacent islands belonging to one nation to enjoy the same day. Thus by international‘ agreement the date jline! zig-zags down the' Pacific, where; it can cause the least muddle. The result is that when it is midday iii Greenwich it is 11.30 pan. in New ’Zealand on the sArnb tlaiy.' A' few hundred injleis east of the Dominion, hpwever, it is T a.m. oh the day before, “East .is East and West is ’West.’’ you know “the' rhyme—well, ■they do!meet, on the date line; ’a'delightful spot wherh you can step, from Monday into Sunday ' just as you please. 1 '' ■