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Greenwich, time and ‘the line’
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Greenwich, time and ‘the line’ Rebekah Higgitt* and Graham Dolan Royal Observatory, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, London SE10 9NF, UK
Ask most visitors to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, why they have come and they will tell you that they want to stand on ‘the line’. Press them further and they might add something about standing astride longitude zero, one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one in the west. Few know how the Prime Meridian of the world comes to pass through Greenwich, or even realise that the line is there because of the observatory, rather than vice versa. But the line, of course, has a history, as does the public’s response to it.
1884 International Meridian Conference There is a standard account of the genesis of the Prime Meridian in Greenwich. Although Britain had taken the meridian (north–south line of longitude) to which the Greenwich transit instrument was aligned as a reference point for navigational data, charts and maps since the 18th century and for most timekeeping purposes since the mid19th century, guidebooks and websites explain that it became an international standard in 1884. This was the result of an international conference held in Washington, D.C. at which delegates from 25 countries were asked to settle on a common initial meridian from which to measure time and longitude. They voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Greenwich meridian and, because of this, the Royal Observatory celebrated the 125th anniversary of the Prime Meridian in October 2009. However, as with all such anniversaries, a closer look shows that things are less neat than they initially appear. The Washington conference did indeed recommend that the Greenwich meridian become the Prime Meridian, and that longitude should be counted up to 1808 both east and west from that reference point. Likewise, the resolutions indicated that there should be a Universal Day, accounted in 24-h notation, that would begin at midnight Greenwich Mean Time. But those recommendations were just that, recommendations. The conference had no power to bind governments and, as with other standards of measurement, it was a long, slow process – achieved through the accumulated decisions of governments, institutions and businesses as well as international bodies – that finally made the Washington recommendations an accepted, if not official, convention.1 The immediate and tangible results of the 1884 conference were, therefore, minimal. The only government that officially endorsed the recommendations was that of *Corresponding author.Higgitt, R. ([email protected]) 1 See Bartky, I. (2007) One Time Fits All: the Campaign for Global Uniformity (Standford, CA: Stanford University Press) and Howse, D. (1997) Greenwich Time and the Longitude (London: Philip Wilson and National Maritime Museum), pp. 117–61. Available online 23 December 2009. www.sciencedirect.com
Japan in an act of 1886, which, at the same time, adopted a national standard time nine hours ahead of Greenwich. This choice – which, looking retrospectively, appears as a step toward the adoption of World Time Zones – was not, in fact, a result of the Washington recommendations. While advocating the adoption of the Universal Day, the Washington delegates had added that this should ‘‘not interfere with the use of local or other standard time where desirable’’.2 They chose to leave such decisions to individual nations, although several hoped that, ultimately, Universal Time would be the standard time of the whole world. For Great Britain, where the Greenwich meridian was already taken as the initial, or prime, meridian for most mapping and timekeeping purposes, the Washington recommendations would have far less impact on either ordinary or official life than elsewhere. Yet the government did nothing to make them law and the only immediate result of the conference was that William Christie, the Astronomer Royal, changed the hands of the 24-h public clock outside the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, on 1 January 1885 (Fig. 1). This was in accordance with another of the Washington recommendations: that the astronomical day, traditionally reckoned from midday, should conform to the civil day, beginning at midnight. In doing this Christie was acting prematurely, especially as it was the controversial proposal to alter the astronomical day that lost the Washington recommendations the vital support of many eminent astronomers.3 In the event, even the Nautical Almanac, based on observations made at Greenwich, did not drop the use of the astronomical day until its edition for the year 1925. Christie was, however, clearly keen to make a visible demonstration of his support for the idea of Universal Time, which he subsequently backed up with a lecture at the Royal Institution in 1885. Here Christie stated his hope that the implementation of what we now call time zones would simply be a stepping stone to the international adoption of Universal Time.4 Behind the scenes he pressed the government and other astronomers to adopt the necessary changes, but to little effect. Britain and the 1884 conference: popular responses Christie’s decision to alter the 24-h gate clock at Greenwich mirrored, or perhaps even dictated, the wider public reaction in Britain to the 1884 conference. The question of the Prime Meridian as ‘the line’ on maps or on the ground seems to have been of relatively little interest, though by and large 2 (1884) International Conference held at Washington for the purpose of fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. Protocols of the Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: Gibson Bros.), p. 180.. 3 Bartky, One Time Fits All, pp. 100–19.. 4 Christie, W.H.M. (1885), ‘Universal Time’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 11, pp. 387–94..
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Fig. 2. ‘What’s o’clock?’, Punch (13 December 1884), p. 277. ß National Library of Scotland.
Fig. 1. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, from the east in the later 1880s. The 24-h gate clock by Charles Shepherd is in the centre, showing a time of about 1150. From the early 1910s the meridian line was marked along the public path under the Observatory’s retaining wall on the right of the picture. The Airy Transit Circle, which defines the meridian, is housed in the building just visible on the extreme left of the picture. ß Graham Dolan.
it was complacently accepted as a natural consequence of Britain’s international standing. Instead, popular periodicals, from Nature to Punch, suggest that attention and anxiety focused on the replacement of a.m. and p.m. with a 24-h notation. The chief topics for discussion appear to have been the design of clocks and watch dials and the question of whether public clocks should strike 13–24 times after midday. Articles and letters from late 1884 and early 1885 suggest a perception that the Washington resolutions were binding and that the ‘new reckoning’ of time came into force on 1 January 1885, as symbolised by Christie’s action.5 Thus the juvenile magazine Young England informed its readers in an article on ‘The Old Time and the New’ that, as a result of the 1884 conference, there was a ‘‘new method of reckoning time. We are to reckon from 1 o’clock up to 24 o’clock. Instead, therefore, of our Editor inviting his readers and friends to a conversazione for six or seven o’clock p.m., he will in the future do it for 18 or 19 o’clock’’.6 The Graphic reported that ‘‘some persons have gone so far as to have their watches altered in consequence of statements that the Astronomer Royal had intended to begin the new reckoning on January 1st, 1885’’, and there were suggestions that watchmakers were encouraging the notion that not just new dials but new 24-h movements would be required.7 Even Nature, although aware that the 24-h notation was likely only to be used by railway and telegraph companies at present, thought it ‘‘proper . . . to 5 One example is the Report of the Liverpool Angling Association in The Fishing Gazette (3 Jan 1885) states that ‘‘The annual meeting is fixed for January 8th at 20 o’clock (new reckoning), or 8 p.m. prompt’’. 6 Bower, J. A., ‘The Old Time and the New’, Young England (1 March 1885). 7 ‘The Washington Time Conference’, The Graphic (17 January 1885), no. 790.
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consider in what way ordinary watches and clocks could be best accommodated to such a change in the reckoning’’.8 Their suggestions about 24-h movements or double dials and, especially, the raising of the issue of how many times a public clock might strike at night caused a flurry of correspondence with some even more tortuously complicated suggestions as well as dismissive rejections of any such measures.9 Given these responses in serious journals, it is not surprising that satirical magazines had fun with the concept. Hilarity could apparently be provoked with the idea of ‘‘seventeen o’clock tea’’ or a song entitled ‘‘Meet me in the Lane when the Clock strikes Twenty-one’’, not to mention, Dickory, Dickory dock, The Mouse ran up the Clock; The Clock struck Thirteen, And the Mouse turned green From the mere effect of the shock!10 The shocking appearance of a 24-h dial was nicely illustrated in December 1884 (Fig. 2). The Melbourne Punch had, of course, greater anxieties about the introduction of Universal Time to play with – not just the 24-h notation, but the use of Greenwich time half a world away. Thus a cartoon entitled ‘Got Her That Time’ shows a husband returning home to his wife late and drunk but claiming that, because of the change of time reckoning (as announced by the Greenwich Observatory), it was not the wee small hours at all, but 51 min past fourteen.11 8
‘Our future clocks and watches’, Nature 31 (13 November 1884), p. 36. This focus on clock dials was partly related to knowledge of the 24-hour public clock at Greenwich but also the various suggestions put forward by Sandford Fleming, the great champion of Universal Time, which included dials with both 24 numbers in Roman numerals and 24 letters of the alphabet, Fleming, S. (1879) ‘Time-reckoning and the selection of a prime meridian to be common to all nations’, Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, Toronto. 10 ‘Tempora mutantur’, Punch (6 December 1884), p. 268. NB ‘five o’clock tea’ was a British institution much beloved and satirised by Punch. 11 ‘Got her that time!’, Melbourne Punch (27 November 1884). 9
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These jokes and discussions quickly died down as it became clear that no draconian enforcement was going to be made, and that translation between 12- and 24-h notation was remarkably easy to accomplish. Likewise, as time zones slowly became established, the idea of a civil use of the Universal Day and Universal Time became redundant except in transnational or global contexts. By the start of the First World War, the Greenwich meridian had effectively become the Prime Meridian of the world, at least for the major commercial and maritime nations. Despite its slow and contested adoption it was becoming a line almost with a status equivalent to the ‘natural’ line of the equator. The idea that Greenwich was the point where east meets west, even the centre of the earth, could be used to emphasise the importance of the Royal Observatory and the nation, and led naturally to the desire to mark out the line itself. This creation of ‘the line’ also led to the creation of the myth of October 1884 as its founding moment, in the absence of any other identifiable date on which the world made a collective agreement. Marking ‘the line’ The well-informed knew that the really important part of the Observatory in Greenwich, as far as the meridian is concerned, was the transit instrument, where the observations that mapped stars and celestial movements and determined GMT were made. Early explanations of the meridian made by members of the Observatory’s staff highlight this fact. Edwin Dunkin, for many years the assistant with responsibility for astronomical instruments, added in a post-1884 revision of his popular Midnight Sky, that the observer, ‘‘when seated at the instrument, looking south, has his right arm in the western, and his left arm in the eastern hemisphere’’.12 Walter Maunder, head of the spectroscopic and solar-photographic department, likewise pointed to the transit instrument as the key site. This was to counter the confusion of the public who, forbidden to enter the Observatory itself, were faced with the 24-h gate clock and little else: One day two Scotchmen stood just outside the main entrance of Greenwich Observatory, looking intently at the great twenty-four-hour clock, which is such an object of attention to the passers through the Park. ‘Jock,’ said one of them to the other, ‘d’ye ken whaur ye are?’ Jock admitted his ignorance. ‘Ye are at the vara ceentre of the airth’.13 Maunder explained that although Jock’s friend, ‘‘meant to tell his companion that he was standing on the prime meridian of the world, the imaginary base line from which all distances, east or west, are reckoned; in short, that he was on ‘Longitude Nought’’’, he was not exactly on the meridian, defined as it is by the transit instrument inside the gates. Undoubtedly pride in the institution and nation, as well as a desire to end such confusion, led to the decision to mark the position of the meridian line for the public. At 12 Dunkin, E. (1891) The Midnight Sky. Familiar Notes on the Stars and Planets (London: Religious Tract Society), p. 155. 13 Maunder, E. W. (1900) The Royal Observatory, Greenwich: a Glance at its History and Work (London: Religious Tract Society), p. 146.
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Fig. 3. The Greenwich meridian soon after it was marked outside the observatory in the early 1910s. ß Graham Dolan.
Greenwich this was first done on the narrow public path that passes to the north of the Observatory, probably some time in the early 1910s. It is possible that this was done as Frank Dyson took over as Astronomer Royal in 1910, at which time a number of other building works were underway, although it would be nice to imagine that this small but public display of the significance and perhaps permanence of this line coincided with the eventual decision by the French to bring its legal time and nautical charts into conformity with the Greenwich meridian in 1911/12. However, the fact that the marking of the line was not recorded in the annual report of the Astronomer Royal or, apparently, in newspapers is a good indication of the relative unimportance of the physical site at this date. It is also noteworthy that the line itself was engraved with the words ‘‘Greenwich Meridian’’ and not ‘‘Prime Meridian’’ (Fig. 3), suggesting that it was a site of local and historic rather than current international significance. By the 1930s there was no doubting the significance of ‘the line’ and the widespread desire to mark it, both at Greenwich and elsewhere along its path through Britain (Box 1). History was also rewritten, or at least simplified. In 1900, Maunder’s history of the Royal Observatory was clear in explaining that the wider adoption of the Greenwich meridian was the result of piecemeal practical decisions that were as yet far from complete, for even major nations like France and Ireland still used the meridians of their capital cities at this date.14 In 1934, however, Harold Spencer Jones, then Astronomer Royal, composed a text for a small plaque to be placed next to the line marked outside the Observatory which told passers-by: ‘‘By international agreement in 1884, it [the Greenwich meridian] has universally been adopted as the meridian of zero longitude, from which the longitude of every other place is measured’’. Likewise in his own history of the Observatory, Spencer Jones repeated this error, and compounded it by adding that the same conference had recommended ‘‘a system of standard or zone times based on Greenwich Mean Time’’15 14
Maunder, The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, pp. 148–54. Spencer Jones, H. (1946, revised ed.) The Royal Observatory Greenwich (London: Longmans, Green & Co.), p. 29. 15
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Box 1. Marking the line in the 20th century This is a list of all the known markings of the Greenwich meridian (or Prime Meridian) line made for non-astronomical purposes before 1960. It is interesting that the oldest known of these, a line of poplars planted in 1903 by John Henry Buxton on his estate in Ware, Hertfordshire, seems to have had no connection with the Observatory. Nearby, an obelisk dating from 1897 stands on the Meridian in Isabel Christie Park, but it is not known whether its position is mere coincidence.i The land for the park was donated by Charles Peter Christie, owner of the Christie Brewery in Hoddesdon, who erected the obelisk in memory of his late wife, Isabel Constance Christie. It seems reasonable to imagine that the two neighbouring brewers, Date 1903 c.1910
1933 c.1933
1938 1939 1948 1950 1953
c.1953 1959
i ii iii iv v
Location Easneye Estate, Ware, Herts Greenwich Park
Marine Path, Cleethorpes Promenade, Peacehaven, East Sussex Meridian Road, Lewes, E. Sussex Hawes Down School, West Wickham, Kent Eastgate, Louth, Lincolnshire Thames (south bank) Lane End Common, Newick Hill, Chailey, E. Sussex Addington High School, Croydon Spalding Road, Holbeach, Lincs
Christie and Buxton, were acquainted. Did Christie put the Obelisk on the Meridian because he shared the same surname as the Astronomer Royal, William Christie, or perhaps even because they were related? If he did deliberately mark the meridian, is this what gave Buxton the idea of planting the trees? After 1960 and the opening of the Royal Observatory’s Greenwich site as a museum there has been ever-increasing interest in the meridian line. The 1975 tercentenary of the Observatory’s foundation led to a few further marks, but it was the 1984 centenary of the Washington conference and the millennium celebrations of 2000 that led to a real explosion of meridian marks across the country.
Brief description Line of poplar trees.ii Line across path on the north boundary of Observatory. Original stone strip was re-cut sometime between 27 November 1934 and 7 March 1935 by the ministry of works.iii At the same time, a descriptive plate was mounted. In 1953 the line was replaced with the present bronze strip inset into larger stones and the stone slip on the retaining wall was added.iv Stainless steel strip in path. Stone obelisk, planned to celebrate silver Jubilee of George V. Following a temporary marking, finally completed in 1936 as a memorial monument. Brick obelisk – positioned by Commander Davenport, who was the inspiration for the Peacehaven obelisk. Two obelisks and a sundial. Completion delayed until 1951 because of WW2.v Bronze wall plaque and strip in pavement. Sign visible to shipping on site of gasworks. Stone monument commemorating the coronation of Elizabeth II.
Sundial. Old mill stone with plaque.
Whitely Road, Hoddesdon. The park was known as Whitely Road Recreation Ground until its name was changed in 1997. Estate Map – OS second edition 1898 (1:2500). Correspondence on the Observatory and Herstmonceux, Papers of Harold Spencer Jones, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives (Cambridge University Library), RGO 9/1. Report of the Astronomer Royal to the Board of Visitors of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, 13 June 1953 p. 1; News in brief, The Times, 23 May 1953 p. 8. Letter to the editor, The Times, 7 July 1953, p. 10.
After the Second World War, the Observatory moved site to Herstmonceux, Sussex, but the meridian remained, as did the Airy Transit Circle which defined it. Plans were quickly made – though slowly executed – to turn the old Greenwich site into a museum under the care of the National Maritime Museum. It was immediately understood that, because of the meridian line, it was a tourist attraction. Most importantly for post-war Britain it was something that would entice American visitors. Frank Carr, Director of the National Maritime Museum, wrote of ‘‘the great attraction of the Royal Observatory and the Greenwich Meridian to visitors from overseas, particularly from dollar-spending Countries’’ and his aim of allowing them to visit the historic site, instruments and ‘‘the spot where they can stand, as it were, ‘bestriding the narrow
16 Copy of letter from Frank Carr to J.G. Owen, Treasury Chambers, 22 January 1952, Correspondence on the Observatory and Herstmonceux, Papers of Harold Spencer Jones, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives (Cambridge University Library), RGO 9/1.
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world like a Colossus’ with one foot in the Eastern and one in the Western Hemisphere’’.16 In 1960, when the Old Royal Observatory was opened to the public as an annex of the National Maritime Museum, a stone and brass strip was laid across the courtyard to mark the meridian line so that, as a press release stated, ‘‘visitors can indulge in the conceit of being photographed standing with a foot in each hemisphere’’ (Fig. 4).17 This is something they did in abundance and continue to do today, on a line re-laid in 1992. The one difference is that now most pictures are taken facing north rather than south. Where once the building housing the transit instrument formed the appropriate backdrop, today a sculpture commissioned to mark the millennium tempts photographers to look north and away from the telescope that has defined the Greenwich meridian since 1851 and the Prime Meridian since . . . well, sometime after 1884.
17
National Maritime Museum Press Release No. 6/1960.
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However, despite 1884 not being an anniversary of anything except the conference itself, it remains worthy of our attention. It was the only occasion at which an international group of experts sat together with diplomats to discuss these issues from scientific, commercial and even political angles. The surviving Protocols of the proceedings are a uniquely detailed record of the attempt to thrash out a universal standard that would impact civil life as well as scientific, military, commercial and other interests. It certainly did not end the debates – Jerusalem, for example, was an alternative prime meridian seriously suggested for international consideration in the 1880s and 1890s – but the Washington conference remained a touchstone for governments, scientific bodies and the public alike, codifying what ultimately came to pass.
Fig. 4. The meridian line when it was first marked in the courtyard of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in 1960. ß National Maritime Museum.
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Greenwich, time and ‘the line’ Rebekah Higgitt* and Graham Dolan Royal Observatory, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, London SE10 9NF, UK
Ask most visitors to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, why they have come and they will tell you that they want to stand on ‘the line’. Press them further and they might add something about standing astride longitude zero, one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one in the west. Few know how the Prime Meridian of the world comes to pass through Greenwich, or even realise that the line is there because of the observatory, rather than vice versa. But the line, of course, has a history, as does the public’s response to it.
1884 International Meridian Conference There is a standard account of the genesis of the Prime Meridian in Greenwich. Although Britain had taken the meridian (north–south line of longitude) to which the Greenwich transit instrument was aligned as a reference point for navigational data, charts and maps since the 18th century and for most timekeeping purposes since the mid19th century, guidebooks and websites explain that it became an international standard in 1884. This was the result of an international conference held in Washington, D.C. at which delegates from 25 countries were asked to settle on a common initial meridian from which to measure time and longitude. They voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Greenwich meridian and, because of this, the Royal Observatory celebrated the 125th anniversary of the Prime Meridian in October 2009. However, as with all such anniversaries, a closer look shows that things are less neat than they initially appear. The Washington conference did indeed recommend that the Greenwich meridian become the Prime Meridian, and that longitude should be counted up to 1808 both east and west from that reference point. Likewise, the resolutions indicated that there should be a Universal Day, accounted in 24-h notation, that would begin at midnight Greenwich Mean Time. But those recommendations were just that, recommendations. The conference had no power to bind governments and, as with other standards of measurement, it was a long, slow process – achieved through the accumulated decisions of governments, institutions and businesses as well as international bodies – that finally made the Washington recommendations an accepted, if not official, convention.1 The immediate and tangible results of the 1884 conference were, therefore, minimal. The only government that officially endorsed the recommendations was that of *Corresponding author.Higgitt, R. ([email protected]) 1 See Bartky, I. (2007) One Time Fits All: the Campaign for Global Uniformity (Standford, CA: Stanford University Press) and Howse, D. (1997) Greenwich Time and the Longitude (London: Philip Wilson and National Maritime Museum), pp. 117–61. Available online 23 December 2009. www.sciencedirect.com
Japan in an act of 1886, which, at the same time, adopted a national standard time nine hours ahead of Greenwich. This choice – which, looking retrospectively, appears as a step toward the adoption of World Time Zones – was not, in fact, a result of the Washington recommendations. While advocating the adoption of the Universal Day, the Washington delegates had added that this should ‘‘not interfere with the use of local or other standard time where desirable’’.2 They chose to leave such decisions to individual nations, although several hoped that, ultimately, Universal Time would be the standard time of the whole world. For Great Britain, where the Greenwich meridian was already taken as the initial, or prime, meridian for most mapping and timekeeping purposes, the Washington recommendations would have far less impact on either ordinary or official life than elsewhere. Yet the government did nothing to make them law and the only immediate result of the conference was that William Christie, the Astronomer Royal, changed the hands of the 24-h public clock outside the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, on 1 January 1885 (Fig. 1). This was in accordance with another of the Washington recommendations: that the astronomical day, traditionally reckoned from midday, should conform to the civil day, beginning at midnight. In doing this Christie was acting prematurely, especially as it was the controversial proposal to alter the astronomical day that lost the Washington recommendations the vital support of many eminent astronomers.3 In the event, even the Nautical Almanac, based on observations made at Greenwich, did not drop the use of the astronomical day until its edition for the year 1925. Christie was, however, clearly keen to make a visible demonstration of his support for the idea of Universal Time, which he subsequently backed up with a lecture at the Royal Institution in 1885. Here Christie stated his hope that the implementation of what we now call time zones would simply be a stepping stone to the international adoption of Universal Time.4 Behind the scenes he pressed the government and other astronomers to adopt the necessary changes, but to little effect. Britain and the 1884 conference: popular responses Christie’s decision to alter the 24-h gate clock at Greenwich mirrored, or perhaps even dictated, the wider public reaction in Britain to the 1884 conference. The question of the Prime Meridian as ‘the line’ on maps or on the ground seems to have been of relatively little interest, though by and large 2 (1884) International Conference held at Washington for the purpose of fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. Protocols of the Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: Gibson Bros.), p. 180.. 3 Bartky, One Time Fits All, pp. 100–19.. 4 Christie, W.H.M. (1885), ‘Universal Time’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 11, pp. 387–94..
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Fig. 2. ‘What’s o’clock?’, Punch (13 December 1884), p. 277. ß National Library of Scotland.
Fig. 1. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, from the east in the later 1880s. The 24-h gate clock by Charles Shepherd is in the centre, showing a time of about 1150. From the early 1910s the meridian line was marked along the public path under the Observatory’s retaining wall on the right of the picture. The Airy Transit Circle, which defines the meridian, is housed in the building just visible on the extreme left of the picture. ß Graham Dolan.
it was complacently accepted as a natural consequence of Britain’s international standing. Instead, popular periodicals, from Nature to Punch, suggest that attention and anxiety focused on the replacement of a.m. and p.m. with a 24-h notation. The chief topics for discussion appear to have been the design of clocks and watch dials and the question of whether public clocks should strike 13–24 times after midday. Articles and letters from late 1884 and early 1885 suggest a perception that the Washington resolutions were binding and that the ‘new reckoning’ of time came into force on 1 January 1885, as symbolised by Christie’s action.5 Thus the juvenile magazine Young England informed its readers in an article on ‘The Old Time and the New’ that, as a result of the 1884 conference, there was a ‘‘new method of reckoning time. We are to reckon from 1 o’clock up to 24 o’clock. Instead, therefore, of our Editor inviting his readers and friends to a conversazione for six or seven o’clock p.m., he will in the future do it for 18 or 19 o’clock’’.6 The Graphic reported that ‘‘some persons have gone so far as to have their watches altered in consequence of statements that the Astronomer Royal had intended to begin the new reckoning on January 1st, 1885’’, and there were suggestions that watchmakers were encouraging the notion that not just new dials but new 24-h movements would be required.7 Even Nature, although aware that the 24-h notation was likely only to be used by railway and telegraph companies at present, thought it ‘‘proper . . . to 5 One example is the Report of the Liverpool Angling Association in The Fishing Gazette (3 Jan 1885) states that ‘‘The annual meeting is fixed for January 8th at 20 o’clock (new reckoning), or 8 p.m. prompt’’. 6 Bower, J. A., ‘The Old Time and the New’, Young England (1 March 1885). 7 ‘The Washington Time Conference’, The Graphic (17 January 1885), no. 790.
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consider in what way ordinary watches and clocks could be best accommodated to such a change in the reckoning’’.8 Their suggestions about 24-h movements or double dials and, especially, the raising of the issue of how many times a public clock might strike at night caused a flurry of correspondence with some even more tortuously complicated suggestions as well as dismissive rejections of any such measures.9 Given these responses in serious journals, it is not surprising that satirical magazines had fun with the concept. Hilarity could apparently be provoked with the idea of ‘‘seventeen o’clock tea’’ or a song entitled ‘‘Meet me in the Lane when the Clock strikes Twenty-one’’, not to mention, Dickory, Dickory dock, The Mouse ran up the Clock; The Clock struck Thirteen, And the Mouse turned green From the mere effect of the shock!10 The shocking appearance of a 24-h dial was nicely illustrated in December 1884 (Fig. 2). The Melbourne Punch had, of course, greater anxieties about the introduction of Universal Time to play with – not just the 24-h notation, but the use of Greenwich time half a world away. Thus a cartoon entitled ‘Got Her That Time’ shows a husband returning home to his wife late and drunk but claiming that, because of the change of time reckoning (as announced by the Greenwich Observatory), it was not the wee small hours at all, but 51 min past fourteen.11 8
‘Our future clocks and watches’, Nature 31 (13 November 1884), p. 36. This focus on clock dials was partly related to knowledge of the 24-hour public clock at Greenwich but also the various suggestions put forward by Sandford Fleming, the great champion of Universal Time, which included dials with both 24 numbers in Roman numerals and 24 letters of the alphabet, Fleming, S. (1879) ‘Time-reckoning and the selection of a prime meridian to be common to all nations’, Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, Toronto. 10 ‘Tempora mutantur’, Punch (6 December 1884), p. 268. NB ‘five o’clock tea’ was a British institution much beloved and satirised by Punch. 11 ‘Got her that time!’, Melbourne Punch (27 November 1884). 9
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These jokes and discussions quickly died down as it became clear that no draconian enforcement was going to be made, and that translation between 12- and 24-h notation was remarkably easy to accomplish. Likewise, as time zones slowly became established, the idea of a civil use of the Universal Day and Universal Time became redundant except in transnational or global contexts. By the start of the First World War, the Greenwich meridian had effectively become the Prime Meridian of the world, at least for the major commercial and maritime nations. Despite its slow and contested adoption it was becoming a line almost with a status equivalent to the ‘natural’ line of the equator. The idea that Greenwich was the point where east meets west, even the centre of the earth, could be used to emphasise the importance of the Royal Observatory and the nation, and led naturally to the desire to mark out the line itself. This creation of ‘the line’ also led to the creation of the myth of October 1884 as its founding moment, in the absence of any other identifiable date on which the world made a collective agreement. Marking ‘the line’ The well-informed knew that the really important part of the Observatory in Greenwich, as far as the meridian is concerned, was the transit instrument, where the observations that mapped stars and celestial movements and determined GMT were made. Early explanations of the meridian made by members of the Observatory’s staff highlight this fact. Edwin Dunkin, for many years the assistant with responsibility for astronomical instruments, added in a post-1884 revision of his popular Midnight Sky, that the observer, ‘‘when seated at the instrument, looking south, has his right arm in the western, and his left arm in the eastern hemisphere’’.12 Walter Maunder, head of the spectroscopic and solar-photographic department, likewise pointed to the transit instrument as the key site. This was to counter the confusion of the public who, forbidden to enter the Observatory itself, were faced with the 24-h gate clock and little else: One day two Scotchmen stood just outside the main entrance of Greenwich Observatory, looking intently at the great twenty-four-hour clock, which is such an object of attention to the passers through the Park. ‘Jock,’ said one of them to the other, ‘d’ye ken whaur ye are?’ Jock admitted his ignorance. ‘Ye are at the vara ceentre of the airth’.13 Maunder explained that although Jock’s friend, ‘‘meant to tell his companion that he was standing on the prime meridian of the world, the imaginary base line from which all distances, east or west, are reckoned; in short, that he was on ‘Longitude Nought’’’, he was not exactly on the meridian, defined as it is by the transit instrument inside the gates. Undoubtedly pride in the institution and nation, as well as a desire to end such confusion, led to the decision to mark the position of the meridian line for the public. At 12 Dunkin, E. (1891) The Midnight Sky. Familiar Notes on the Stars and Planets (London: Religious Tract Society), p. 155. 13 Maunder, E. W. (1900) The Royal Observatory, Greenwich: a Glance at its History and Work (London: Religious Tract Society), p. 146.
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Fig. 3. The Greenwich meridian soon after it was marked outside the observatory in the early 1910s. ß Graham Dolan.
Greenwich this was first done on the narrow public path that passes to the north of the Observatory, probably some time in the early 1910s. It is possible that this was done as Frank Dyson took over as Astronomer Royal in 1910, at which time a number of other building works were underway, although it would be nice to imagine that this small but public display of the significance and perhaps permanence of this line coincided with the eventual decision by the French to bring its legal time and nautical charts into conformity with the Greenwich meridian in 1911/12. However, the fact that the marking of the line was not recorded in the annual report of the Astronomer Royal or, apparently, in newspapers is a good indication of the relative unimportance of the physical site at this date. It is also noteworthy that the line itself was engraved with the words ‘‘Greenwich Meridian’’ and not ‘‘Prime Meridian’’ (Fig. 3), suggesting that it was a site of local and historic rather than current international significance. By the 1930s there was no doubting the significance of ‘the line’ and the widespread desire to mark it, both at Greenwich and elsewhere along its path through Britain (Box 1). History was also rewritten, or at least simplified. In 1900, Maunder’s history of the Royal Observatory was clear in explaining that the wider adoption of the Greenwich meridian was the result of piecemeal practical decisions that were as yet far from complete, for even major nations like France and Ireland still used the meridians of their capital cities at this date.14 In 1934, however, Harold Spencer Jones, then Astronomer Royal, composed a text for a small plaque to be placed next to the line marked outside the Observatory which told passers-by: ‘‘By international agreement in 1884, it [the Greenwich meridian] has universally been adopted as the meridian of zero longitude, from which the longitude of every other place is measured’’. Likewise in his own history of the Observatory, Spencer Jones repeated this error, and compounded it by adding that the same conference had recommended ‘‘a system of standard or zone times based on Greenwich Mean Time’’15 14
Maunder, The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, pp. 148–54. Spencer Jones, H. (1946, revised ed.) The Royal Observatory Greenwich (London: Longmans, Green & Co.), p. 29. 15
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Box 1. Marking the line in the 20th century This is a list of all the known markings of the Greenwich meridian (or Prime Meridian) line made for non-astronomical purposes before 1960. It is interesting that the oldest known of these, a line of poplars planted in 1903 by John Henry Buxton on his estate in Ware, Hertfordshire, seems to have had no connection with the Observatory. Nearby, an obelisk dating from 1897 stands on the Meridian in Isabel Christie Park, but it is not known whether its position is mere coincidence.i The land for the park was donated by Charles Peter Christie, owner of the Christie Brewery in Hoddesdon, who erected the obelisk in memory of his late wife, Isabel Constance Christie. It seems reasonable to imagine that the two neighbouring brewers, Date 1903 c.1910
1933 c.1933
1938 1939 1948 1950 1953
c.1953 1959
i ii iii iv v
Location Easneye Estate, Ware, Herts Greenwich Park
Marine Path, Cleethorpes Promenade, Peacehaven, East Sussex Meridian Road, Lewes, E. Sussex Hawes Down School, West Wickham, Kent Eastgate, Louth, Lincolnshire Thames (south bank) Lane End Common, Newick Hill, Chailey, E. Sussex Addington High School, Croydon Spalding Road, Holbeach, Lincs
Christie and Buxton, were acquainted. Did Christie put the Obelisk on the Meridian because he shared the same surname as the Astronomer Royal, William Christie, or perhaps even because they were related? If he did deliberately mark the meridian, is this what gave Buxton the idea of planting the trees? After 1960 and the opening of the Royal Observatory’s Greenwich site as a museum there has been ever-increasing interest in the meridian line. The 1975 tercentenary of the Observatory’s foundation led to a few further marks, but it was the 1984 centenary of the Washington conference and the millennium celebrations of 2000 that led to a real explosion of meridian marks across the country.
Brief description Line of poplar trees.ii Line across path on the north boundary of Observatory. Original stone strip was re-cut sometime between 27 November 1934 and 7 March 1935 by the ministry of works.iii At the same time, a descriptive plate was mounted. In 1953 the line was replaced with the present bronze strip inset into larger stones and the stone slip on the retaining wall was added.iv Stainless steel strip in path. Stone obelisk, planned to celebrate silver Jubilee of George V. Following a temporary marking, finally completed in 1936 as a memorial monument. Brick obelisk – positioned by Commander Davenport, who was the inspiration for the Peacehaven obelisk. Two obelisks and a sundial. Completion delayed until 1951 because of WW2.v Bronze wall plaque and strip in pavement. Sign visible to shipping on site of gasworks. Stone monument commemorating the coronation of Elizabeth II.
Sundial. Old mill stone with plaque.
Whitely Road, Hoddesdon. The park was known as Whitely Road Recreation Ground until its name was changed in 1997. Estate Map – OS second edition 1898 (1:2500). Correspondence on the Observatory and Herstmonceux, Papers of Harold Spencer Jones, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives (Cambridge University Library), RGO 9/1. Report of the Astronomer Royal to the Board of Visitors of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, 13 June 1953 p. 1; News in brief, The Times, 23 May 1953 p. 8. Letter to the editor, The Times, 7 July 1953, p. 10.
After the Second World War, the Observatory moved site to Herstmonceux, Sussex, but the meridian remained, as did the Airy Transit Circle which defined it. Plans were quickly made – though slowly executed – to turn the old Greenwich site into a museum under the care of the National Maritime Museum. It was immediately understood that, because of the meridian line, it was a tourist attraction. Most importantly for post-war Britain it was something that would entice American visitors. Frank Carr, Director of the National Maritime Museum, wrote of ‘‘the great attraction of the Royal Observatory and the Greenwich Meridian to visitors from overseas, particularly from dollar-spending Countries’’ and his aim of allowing them to visit the historic site, instruments and ‘‘the spot where they can stand, as it were, ‘bestriding the narrow
16 Copy of letter from Frank Carr to J.G. Owen, Treasury Chambers, 22 January 1952, Correspondence on the Observatory and Herstmonceux, Papers of Harold Spencer Jones, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives (Cambridge University Library), RGO 9/1.
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world like a Colossus’ with one foot in the Eastern and one in the Western Hemisphere’’.16 In 1960, when the Old Royal Observatory was opened to the public as an annex of the National Maritime Museum, a stone and brass strip was laid across the courtyard to mark the meridian line so that, as a press release stated, ‘‘visitors can indulge in the conceit of being photographed standing with a foot in each hemisphere’’ (Fig. 4).17 This is something they did in abundance and continue to do today, on a line re-laid in 1992. The one difference is that now most pictures are taken facing north rather than south. Where once the building housing the transit instrument formed the appropriate backdrop, today a sculpture commissioned to mark the millennium tempts photographers to look north and away from the telescope that has defined the Greenwich meridian since 1851 and the Prime Meridian since . . . well, sometime after 1884.
17
National Maritime Museum Press Release No. 6/1960.
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However, despite 1884 not being an anniversary of anything except the conference itself, it remains worthy of our attention. It was the only occasion at which an international group of experts sat together with diplomats to discuss these issues from scientific, commercial and even political angles. The surviving Protocols of the proceedings are a uniquely detailed record of the attempt to thrash out a universal standard that would impact civil life as well as scientific, military, commercial and other interests. It certainly did not end the debates – Jerusalem, for example, was an alternative prime meridian seriously suggested for international consideration in the 1880s and 1890s – but the Washington conference remained a touchstone for governments, scientific bodies and the public alike, codifying what ultimately came to pass.
Fig. 4. The meridian line when it was first marked in the courtyard of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in 1960. ß National Maritime Museum.
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