Pages

29 October 2017

Time and railways

Today we commenced the winter time here in England.  I do not know of any other country that adjusts its clock twice a year.

Only last week did I learn that for quite some time in England, people did not have a national time or clock.  They only had local time or regional time.  It was only with the railways becoming a means of national transport that people felt the need to have a time followed across the country.  That's how the history of having a unified system of calculating time across the country began.  And it is only after 1807, when horse-drawn carriages were used on tramlines, which eventually led to the evolution of railways, that England began to follow one clock.

This once again proves the theory that time is nothing but a record of motion.  If not for the national rail network, people would have followed their own respective time and no one would have had serious difficulties.  More than transport, I think it has all to do with network.  I guess, if the internet were discovered before the establishment of the railways, even then there would have been the notion of a single clock being followed.  However, in this case there would have been some wider consensus on following a particular clock than mere national boundaries.  

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...