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Mark here. You should know that there's

1:32

some rough audio in this episode. I

1:34

got a fantastic interview on tape, but

1:36

the quality of the sound is less

1:39

than stellar. but

1:46

yeah. Just know, it can

1:48

be a little hard to

1:50

hear. Content warning. This episode

1:52

contains graphic descriptions of a

1:55

middle school word problem. Triggering,

1:57

I know, but I'll make it multiple

1:59

choice for you. Two trains depart

2:01

on the morning of August

2:03

12th, 1853. The first leaves

2:05

Uxbridge, Massachusetts at 6 .30 a

2:07

.m. traveling south to Narragansett

2:09

Bay. The

2:11

second departs from Providence towards

2:14

Worcester at 7 .20 a .m.

2:19

If the first train raises to its

2:21

max speed of 25 miles per hour,

2:23

and the other makes a five -minute stop

2:25

around Valley Falls, Rhode Island, when will

2:27

the two trains pass one another? If

2:41

you answered A, 8 o 'clock,

2:43

then you did an extraordinarily

2:45

good job working out the math,

2:47

particularly considering I didn't give

2:49

you nearly enough of the relevant

2:52

information. Unfortunately, you're wrong. The

2:54

correct answer is C, never. Because

2:56

one piece of that relevant

2:58

information is that around a blind

3:00

curve near Valley Falls, Rhode

3:02

Island, the north and southbound railways

3:05

converged onto a single shared

3:07

track. So the 6 .30 out

3:09

of Uxbridge and the 7 .20

3:11

out of Providence could not pass

3:13

one another. Instead, at approximately

3:15

8 a .m., they collided head -on.

3:39

What had happened was

3:41

a collision had occurred

3:43

on August 12th

3:45

by two trains, one

3:47

of them coming from

3:49

Providence and going upwards

3:52

toward Boston, another

3:54

one coming down from

3:56

Worcester to the recreational

3:58

areas down in Narragay.

4:00

at they by what's an Iraqi point

4:02

which at the time wasn't very very big

4:05

festival area. This is

4:07

Francine Jackson lead astronomer

4:09

for Brown University's Lad

4:11

Observatory. Oh okay I'm Francine

4:14

Jackson and among other things

4:16

I'm I'm a staff astronomer at

4:18

Brown University's Lad Observatory.

4:20

I've been there longer

4:22

than most people can

4:24

count. Francine is also more than

4:26

a bit of a local history buff,

4:28

and I asked her to tell me

4:30

about a recent hobby horse of hers,

4:33

the Valley Falls Train Collision. But

4:35

I'm also a board member

4:37

of our local, the Blackstone

4:39

Valley Historical Society. I was

4:41

very fortunate when going to

4:44

the observatory one day I haven't seen

4:46

a picture that I had seen before,

4:48

and then I asked about it, I

4:50

was told that it was a... copy

4:52

of the digora type of the first

4:54

ever photograph ring wreck. And when I asked

4:56

where it happened, it turned out to be

4:58

a couple miles from my house in the

5:01

next in the next town in August

5:03

of 1853. So the next time we had

5:05

a board meeting at the Historical

5:07

Society, I kind of brought this. You

5:09

never guess what I looked. You know,

5:11

this is great. Except that one of the

5:13

board members said, oh yeah, I wrote about it

5:15

in one of my books. But then I

5:17

had to find out more about it. The

5:20

Valley Falls collision took place in the

5:23

middle of a period marked by

5:25

rail disasters. But Valley Falls stands

5:27

out for several reasons. Most train

5:29

accidents in the era were due

5:31

to boilers exploding, a thing that

5:33

happened with disturbing frequency. Head-on collisions

5:35

were much more rare. The first

5:37

such incident to take place in

5:40

America had occurred less than 25

5:42

years earlier. In 1837, near Suffolk, Virginia.

5:44

But 1853 had already been a bad

5:46

year for train travel. On January 6th

5:49

of that year, United States President-elect Franklin

5:51

Pierce, his wife Jane, and 12-year-old son

5:53

Benjamin were returning from a holiday visit

5:55

with family in Andover Massachusetts to their

5:58

home in Concord. When their train... derailed

6:00

and toppled down an embankment, killing

6:02

Benjamin and leaving the soon-to-be president

6:04

and soon-to-be First Lady in a

6:07

state of mourning as they shambled

6:09

into the White House. The record

6:11

for most deadly train accident in

6:13

America was broken four times in

6:15

1853 before Valley Falls. On March

6:17

4th, a passenger train filled with

6:20

immigrants near Mount Union, Pennsylvania, re-ended

6:22

a male train when its engineer

6:24

fell asleep at the controls. The

6:26

boiler exploded and the steam from

6:28

the explosion scalded seven people to

6:30

death. Just three weeks later, a

6:32

loose rail caused two passenger cars

6:35

to derail near Wheeling West Virginia.

6:37

They fell straight off a cliff,

6:39

killing at least eight and possibly

6:41

as many as 17. On the

6:43

night of April 26th, two trains

6:45

collided at Greater Grand Crossing in

6:47

the South Side of Chicago, because

6:50

one of them had a headlight

6:52

out and couldn't be seen. 18

6:54

died. Less than two weeks after

6:56

that, a New Haven railroad conductor

6:58

traveling through Norwood Connecticut neglected to

7:00

notice that a swing bridge over

7:02

the Norwalk River was open. He

7:05

ran his train right off of

7:07

it and into the water, killing

7:09

46. By the time that 13

7:11

people were killed at Valley Falls,

7:13

that number was no longer record

7:15

setting as it would have been

7:17

a few months earlier. But it

7:19

was severe and added to a

7:22

mounting sense of danger about American

7:24

railroads. that it was the most

7:26

dramatic kind of train accident surely

7:28

played a part in its notoriety.

7:30

But the Valley Falls Coalition also

7:32

has a rather dubious honor. The

7:34

first train accident ever to be

7:37

photographed. And when is the major

7:39

things about this was the fact

7:41

that it had been, it had

7:43

been photographed. But this man, and

7:45

I still don't exactly know if

7:47

his name was right, by the

7:49

way Mr. walking around, you know,

7:52

like a reporter with this digero

7:54

type on his shoulder looking for

7:56

something to happen or if you

7:58

saw it ran back where his

8:00

help was and took the picture. If

8:02

you've ever seen this, it is kind

8:05

of almost scary when you see the

8:07

mess and the bodies all over the

8:09

place. The photograph was then transferred

8:11

into a woodcut which ran in

8:14

the illustrated news, a sensational penny

8:16

paper owned by PT Barnum. That

8:18

image soon spread across the country.

8:21

Yes, and from that, yeah, just

8:23

went to almost every newspaper in

8:25

the country. That really got people

8:27

kind of worried about it. Which

8:29

gets us to the final thing

8:31

that sets the Valley Falls collision

8:34

apart. It is probably the most

8:36

consequential train accident ever. Which is

8:38

a tall claim. The consequences of

8:41

the death of Benjamin Pierce on

8:43

American history are interesting to

8:45

consider. Franklin and Jane thought

8:47

it was a punishment from

8:49

God for pursuing politics. And

8:51

instead of doing much precedenting,

8:54

Pierce drank himself to death. That

8:57

first head-on collision in 1837 to

8:59

Virginia? Well, that's pretty important. The

9:01

investigation and cleanup of that incident

9:04

felt a Major General George Washington

9:06

Whistler, father of painter James McNeil

9:08

Whistler, and husband to Anna, i.e.

9:11

Whistler's mother. George Whistler took cues

9:13

from the Prussian Army on how

9:15

to handle the emergency and aftermath.

9:17

He created a command and control

9:19

organization, managed systematically from the top

9:21

down. It was the first modern

9:24

business management system, management in this

9:26

sense, being a term coined by

9:28

Whistler. So, if you work at

9:30

a job that has a chain

9:32

of command, or a manager, or

9:34

a job description, that is due

9:36

in part to the 1837 Virginia

9:39

collision. How could Valley Falls be

9:41

more important than that?

9:43

That's simple. While you probably

9:45

experienced the effects of Whistler's

9:47

command structure, most days of

9:49

your adult life, you almost...

9:51

Definitely experience the effects of

9:54

valley falls every day, every

9:56

hour, every minute even. You're

9:58

experiencing them. right now.

10:01

This is the constant.

10:04

A history

10:07

of getting

10:09

things wrong.

10:11

This is

10:13

the constant.

10:15

A history of

10:18

getting things wrong.

10:21

I'm Mark Chrysler.

10:23

In spite of the date, and the

10:25

circuit is cold open, this is the

10:28

second episode of a pair revolving around

10:30

New Year's. Not the holiday or the

10:32

history of the holiday itself, but the

10:35

history of timekeeping that makes the celebration

10:37

of that holiday in its modern form

10:39

possible. We're picking up this week in

10:41

the mid-1800s, when almost everything necessary

10:43

for a good New Year's Eve

10:46

countdown had fallen into place. The

10:48

Gregorian calendar had been widely adopted,

10:50

along with the January 1st start

10:52

of the year. The 24-hour clock,

10:54

divided into two sets of 12,

10:56

was even more universally acknowledged, as

10:58

well as its subdivisions, 60 minutes

11:00

and 60 seconds. If you haven't yet

11:03

listened and want to know how all

11:05

that stuff happened, you should go back

11:07

an episode and listen to It's about

11:09

time. But if you already have, you

11:11

might be wondering what's left to

11:13

say. If we've got the calendar and

11:15

the holiday and the clock, what are

11:18

we missing? The answer, to put

11:20

it directly, is time. Time itself.

11:22

in the sense that we know

11:24

and experience it today, which comes

11:26

down, in large part, to an

11:28

1853 train collision. Today's

11:31

episode, In the Meantime. Take

11:33

a look at the time right now.

11:35

I know you've got a clock around.

11:38

You're almost certainly listening

11:40

to me on something that

11:43

doubles as one. Okay, got

11:45

it? Now, think of a friend

11:47

who lives somewhat distant from you.

11:49

Maybe a couple towns over, maybe

11:52

a few states, maybe half the

11:54

world. What time is it for them right

11:56

now? Probably you know the

11:58

answer immediately. Or... If you chose someone

12:01

who lives halfway around the world, you

12:03

might have to do a quick

12:05

Google. Because virtually everyone alive

12:07

today subscribes, mostly unconsciously, to

12:09

the idea that they live

12:11

somewhere within a global system

12:13

of time zones that divide

12:15

the world fairly neatly into

12:17

24-ish sections, each and hour wide. So

12:20

for me, right now, my computer shows

12:22

that it is 113 p.m. That means

12:24

that it's 113 p.m. for my brother,

12:26

too, even though he's several miles west

12:28

of me. I know that it's 1113

12:30

for my friend Aaron who just moved

12:33

to LA. I'm not sure where

12:35

fellow broadcaster Nikki Wolf is

12:37

right now. Hi Nikki! Thanks

12:39

for convincing me to leave

12:41

Twitter a little earlier than

12:43

everyone else. Anyway, Nikki is

12:45

probably in either Brooklyn or

12:47

London, so that's 2.13 or

12:49

7.13 p. This system is neat.

12:52

It's convenient and useful.

12:55

It's also totally absurd.

12:57

Absolutely. are almost absolutely

13:00

meaningless. And up

13:02

into the late 1800s,

13:04

it didn't exist.

13:06

For most of

13:08

recorded time, no

13:10

one bothered to

13:12

record time. Not, hour by

13:15

hour, or minute by

13:17

minute, at least. As

13:19

we talked about last...

13:21

Time. God damn

13:23

this limited

13:25

vocabulary. When

13:28

people did keep time, the time they

13:31

kept was rough and uneven. The daytime

13:33

could be divided into 12 hours

13:35

and determined via sundial. But that meant

13:37

that the length of an hour and

13:39

the length of the day varied by

13:41

the time of year. A summer daylight

13:43

hour was longer than a winter one,

13:45

and the 12 hours of day and night

13:47

were almost never equal to one another.

13:49

Solar Time was therefore hard to

13:51

calculate and hard to draw much

13:53

meaning from, but it did have

13:55

the not small benefit of being

13:57

related to an actual factual thing.

14:00

Solar noon and high noon were

14:02

one and the same, and

14:04

whatever time you took from a

14:06

sundial was the actual time

14:08

in a direct and literal sense.

14:11

But as mechanical clocks proliferated and

14:13

industry grew, the need for a

14:15

more abstract, yet usable time

14:18

developed. Hours, minutes, and seconds needed

14:20

a standard length that didn't

14:22

vacillate with the seasons. 24 fixed

14:24

hours, each consisting of 60

14:26

fixed minutes of 60 seconds, regardless

14:28

of when the sun rose

14:31

and set. Sounds like the time

14:33

we use now, but it

14:35

wasn't. Because that fixed clock was

14:37

fixed to its apparent solar

14:39

noon, and that high noon was

14:41

usually regarded as the beginning of

14:43

the day, not its opposite midnight

14:45

as it is for us now.

14:47

Or one after for you persnickety

14:50

jerks in the comments section. This

14:54

system, called local mean time,

14:56

effectively meant that every city,

14:58

if not every clock in

15:00

every city, kept its own

15:02

time. High noon shifts

15:04

four minutes per degree of longitude,

15:07

and the distance between degrees of

15:09

longitude shrinks the further you get

15:11

from the equator. Here

15:13

in Chicago, for instance, just moving 13

15:15

miles from one side of the

15:17

city to the other altered a traveler's

15:19

local mean time by a minute. If

15:21

someone were to travel a great distance east

15:23

or west in a short period of

15:26

time, their whole day could be literally ruined.

15:28

Luckily, though, no one could

15:31

do that. So what did it matter

15:33

if time was out of sync

15:35

between, just say, for example, Providence, Rhode

15:37

Island and Uxbridge, Massachusetts? One couldn't

15:39

just zip from one to the other.

15:42

There was no way for a

15:44

providentian and an Uxbridgeian to

15:46

temporarily interact such that the

15:48

time distance would be important.

15:50

So no worries, right? Yeah,

15:53

yeah, you see what's coming. But you know

15:56

who couldn't? The conductors

15:58

of two

16:00

trains, one

16:02

out of. Duxbridge

17:00

Bored with with your boring cardio?

17:02

Stop pedaling that snooze to to

17:04

and try some cardio that's

17:07

actually fun! actually fun. fitness,

17:09

available on available Isn't that

17:11

right, Isn't that right, Jane will never

17:13

be boring again. again. to

17:15

the beat of thousands of

17:17

chart -topping songs inside stunning songs

17:19

landscapes virtual landscapes. Bet you're stationary,

17:21

Bike,.com and join the

17:24

next Fitness Revolution! and join the

17:26

next fitness only on Supernatural

17:28

for team. Throughout

17:42

the 17th and 18th centuries

17:44

local mean time-range supreme, dividing

17:46

the world into a galaxy

17:48

of tiny time bubbles, like

17:50

clock-fiefdoms that rarely interacted. But

17:52

the advent and spread, first

17:54

of railroads and then of

17:56

telegraphs, suddenly brought these bubbles

17:58

into contact with one another,

18:00

and the concept of local

18:02

time, which for so long

18:05

had seemed inconsiderably natural, turned

18:07

lurching and confused. In the United

18:09

States alone, the Bureau of

18:11

Transportation Statistics estimates there were

18:14

at least 144 different local

18:16

times, many of which were

18:18

becoming directly connected via train

18:21

and telegraph. That's almost certainly

18:23

an undercount. given the 1850s,

18:25

the Chicago Tribune listed more

18:28

than a hundred local times

18:30

in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and

18:32

Indiana alone. An 1868 table

18:34

from the American Railroad Guide

18:37

for the United States and

18:39

Canada showed just how baffling

18:41

things were. It displayed the

18:43

time in various American cities

18:45

compared to noon in Washington

18:47

DC. In Albany, New York,

18:49

noon in Washington was 1214.

18:51

In Augusta, Georgia, 1141.

18:54

Columbus, Ohio, 1136. Columbus,

18:56

South Carolina, 1144. It

18:58

was 1049 in Galveston,

19:00

1254 in Halifax, 1130

19:02

in Tallahassee, and 902

19:04

in Sacramento, California. If

19:06

you were traveling by rail,

19:09

this was a total mess. Just

19:11

knowing when you had to be

19:13

at the station was hard enough,

19:15

but imagine if you had to

19:17

make a transfer along the way.

19:20

What's worse is that many of

19:22

the railroad companies didn't themselves mark

19:24

their schedules by the local times

19:26

they passed through. Instead, they put their

19:29

entire lines on the time of

19:31

their local offices. Most of the

19:33

railways were based either out of

19:35

New York, Chicago, Columbus, or Cincinnati.

19:37

So, even if you were just

19:39

trying to catch a 1 p.m.

19:41

train out of Boulder, Colorado, you

19:43

might show up on time, only

19:45

to realize that 1 p.m. for

19:47

your New York-based train had come

19:50

two hours previous. A similar

19:52

problem hounded telegraph offices,

19:54

where it was entirely possible

19:56

to send an early morning

19:58

or late evening message only

20:00

to find that the office at the

20:02

receiving end was not yet opened or

20:05

already closed. But these twin problems

20:07

also presented a parsimonious solution. When

20:09

the telegraph started to come into

20:11

its own in the late 1830s,

20:14

telegraph lines had to be constructed

20:16

to carry the signals and the

20:19

easiest, most common-sensical and frictionless place

20:21

to build them was a long

20:23

railroad tracks. The island of Great

20:26

Britain was the first to

20:28

understand the connection. Great Britain

20:30

isn't very large, so the

20:32

difference in local meantime between

20:34

British railway stations was comparatively

20:37

small, just 20 minutes from one

20:39

side to the other. But, England

20:41

was the first nation to build

20:44

a country-spanning telegraph system right along

20:46

its rail lines. And one of

20:48

those telegraph lines went straight

20:50

to the Royal Observatory in

20:52

Greenwich. As we have explained repeatedly

20:55

and at length, had been founded

20:57

mainly in an effort to solve

20:59

the most difficult problem in human

21:01

history, determining the longitude of ships

21:03

at sea. That had mostly been taken

21:06

care of by the end of the

21:08

18th century, by the invention of ultra-reliable

21:10

clocks by John Harrison. But even the

21:12

most accurate of clocks could only tell

21:14

you your position if it were synced

21:16

perfectly to a known time. In

21:19

181818, the main job of the Royal

21:21

Observatory shifted to providing that time. A

21:23

great time ball was fixed atop

21:25

the observatory, where it still

21:27

stands today. At 5 minutes to

21:29

1 p.m. local mean time, which is

21:31

to say, Greenwich mean time, the ball

21:34

would be raised. And at 1 o'clock

21:36

exactly, it would begin to drop,

21:38

so that any ships in the

21:40

area could cue their chronometers exactly

21:43

to Greenwich time before setting out.

21:45

It was a pretty good system, which

21:47

was much improved in 1852, when

21:50

the observatory also began sending out

21:52

a telegraph signal, marking 1 p.m.,

21:54

which meant that ships could get

21:56

the time from places other than

21:58

Greenwich. But since the The telegraph lines

22:00

usually followed the railways. It also

22:03

met the train stations around the

22:05

country had an easy way to

22:07

sink their clocks, too. For a

22:09

few years, stations used tables provided

22:11

by the railroad companies to convert

22:14

the Greenwich signal to their own

22:16

local time. But it was a

22:18

lot simpler to cut out the

22:20

middleman, even if a lot of

22:22

locals didn't much care for the

22:25

idea of giving up their true

22:27

noons. Particularly miffed by this idea

22:29

were the churches, who for centuries

22:31

had been the primary keepers of

22:33

time in their areas in their

22:36

areas. In many towns across England,

22:38

the compromise reached was to add

22:40

a second-minute hand to public clocks

22:42

so that one could tell the

22:44

local and London time simultaneously. But

22:47

by 1855, most of these second-minute

22:49

hands, that's a confusing phrase, were

22:51

an affectation. Three years after the

22:53

Royal Observatory began sending its electric

22:55

signals, 98% of the island had

22:58

switched over to Greenwich time. The

23:00

United States was a different beast.

23:02

The country was much larger and

23:04

crucially much wider than Great Britain,

23:06

which made the issue far more

23:09

severe, but also far harder to

23:11

coordinate. And that rugged individualistic spirit

23:13

that never gets us into any

23:15

trouble long stifled most talks of

23:17

unifying time. With one big, whopping,

23:20

train-crash-sized exception. The

23:24

morning of August 12th, 1853,

23:26

was warm and sunny, and

23:28

the special excursion train headed

23:30

to Narragansett Bay was chock

23:32

full of passengers, some 475

23:34

of them. Perhaps because of

23:36

the number of passengers piling

23:38

on, the train was running

23:40

late when it departed Valley

23:42

Falls, headed for a single

23:44

track section known as the

23:46

Boston Switch. What would happen

23:48

would be the Northbound train,

23:50

would travel, there was only

23:52

one set of tracks at

23:54

that time, for three quarters

23:56

of a mile both north

23:58

and southbound trains. track. The

24:00

morning schedule saw three trains crossing

24:02

the switch in short order. The

24:05

southbound excursion train was meant to

24:07

cross first, then the Worcesterbound commuter

24:09

train from Providence heading north, which

24:11

was tailed just a few minutes

24:13

later by another commuter train to

24:15

Boston. This put the Worcester train in

24:18

a pretty position. If it arrived at

24:20

the switch not having already crossed paths

24:22

with the excursion train, it was supposed

24:24

to wait for five minutes, but wait

24:26

much longer, and it was liable to

24:29

be re-ended by the Boston engine. But

24:31

the excursion train had its own time

24:33

pressure. Most of its passengers were making

24:36

a tight transfer to a steamboat in

24:38

Neregances. So, when the conductor of the

24:40

excursion train, a young man named Frederick

24:43

Putnam reached the beginning of the switch,

24:45

he checked his watch. It read 732.

24:47

The schedule said he was supposed to

24:50

be on the other end of the

24:52

switch at 729. That gave him two

24:54

minutes with the five-minute holdover. He turned

24:57

to Ephraim Gates, the engineer. Could they

24:59

make it? Yeah, said Gates. They

25:01

could. Meanwhile, the conductor of the

25:03

Providence to Worcester was waiting at

25:05

the switch. For five minutes he

25:08

waited. And then one more. Once

25:10

six minutes had elapsed with no

25:12

sign of the excursion, the commuter

25:14

train began a slow... cautious ride

25:17

up the Boston switch. Around a

25:19

blind corner from the north, there

25:21

was no such caution. Putnam and Gates

25:23

were barreling down the switch at full

25:26

steam so that they could clear the

25:28

switch in the two minutes necessary, which

25:30

they could have. Except that unbeknownst

25:33

to Putnam and Gates, they didn't

25:35

have two minutes. The special excursion

25:37

train to Nair Gansett struck the

25:40

commuter to Worcester while traveling at

25:42

an estimated 40 miles per hour.

25:44

Unfortunately because the conductor's

25:47

watch was off, he got there too

25:49

fast and they actually totally just

25:51

blew up if you will if you

25:53

want to think of it that way. Both

25:55

of them were pretty much destroyed.

25:57

The South Lawn train especially because

26:00

in those days a lot of

26:02

the train cars were made of

26:04

wood. A report in the Boston

26:06

Journal describing the incident said that

26:08

the trains were, quote, literally piled

26:10

upon top of each other, which

26:12

wasn't exactly right. In fact, the

26:14

third car of the Southbound train

26:16

had telescoped directly through the second

26:18

one. One of the major quotes

26:20

that I always, I hate to

26:22

say love, but I have to.

26:24

Read about it, it was a

26:27

passenger in that southbound train of

26:29

Mr. William Bates, from Northbridge. He

26:31

said, I was seated with my

26:33

wife in about the middle of

26:35

the second car. I was first

26:37

alarmed for an instant by a

26:39

terrible whistle, then can crash upon

26:41

crash with a violent concussion, all

26:43

before me in the car, seemed

26:45

to be thrown into a confused

26:47

mass together. Broken seats flying in

26:49

the forward part of our car,

26:51

pushing in like an eggshell. I

26:54

had time merely to say to

26:56

my wife, be quiet, don't rise,

26:58

as the Bible of the car

27:00

behind us shot directly over my

27:02

head, taking off my hat. The

27:04

journal did, however, paint an accurate

27:06

picture of the aftermath, writing, protruding

27:08

from the wreck horribly mangled, were

27:10

the bodies of the dead, dying,

27:12

and wounded, the latter feeling the

27:14

air with their cries and groans

27:16

and creating a scene most horrid

27:18

to behold. But a picture is

27:20

worth a thousand words, and it's

27:23

the photo. the first of its

27:25

kind, taken in the aftermath, that

27:27

made the Valley Falls collision especially

27:29

attention-grabbing. In total, 14 died, and

27:31

17 were seriously wounded, most of

27:33

whom required amputations. Incredibly, neither Frederick

27:35

Putnam, Ephraim Gates, nor their Worcester-bound

27:37

counterparts, were seriously injured. But they

27:39

weren't off the hook. A

27:45

coroner's inquest was quickly called and

27:47

held over a period of four days

27:49

at the Valley Falls Public Hall, with

27:52

all 14 of the dead lying in

27:54

coffins in the midst of the proceedings.

27:56

Fault was everywhere to be found.

27:58

Most of it, unsurprisingly, was here. upon

28:01

Frederick Putnam, who had only been acting

28:03

as a conductor for a couple of

28:05

weeks. He was cited as rash and

28:08

reckless and was reported to have run

28:10

late most days he was at

28:12

the controls. The most glaring issue

28:14

with Putnam, though, was his watch.

28:16

What had happened was the conductor

28:18

didn't have his proper watch with

28:21

him. In fact, he hadn't really

28:23

gotten one exactly from the train

28:25

company. So what he did was

28:27

he borrowed the one from his neighbor,

28:29

a male, a milkman. And it turned

28:32

out to be a couple minutes

28:34

off. The inquest found that the

28:36

Milkman's watch had been two minutes

28:38

slow. When Putnam started down the

28:41

switch, his time was already up.

28:43

The coroner issued a warrant for

28:45

his arrest on 14 counts of

28:48

manslaughter. But wait! Was it really

28:50

Putnam's fault? Or even the

28:52

Milkman's? In a few senses,

28:54

definitely not. No, it was just a...

28:56

just a mistake by the Southbound

28:58

conductor. And also if you want to think

29:01

of it as an error on behalf

29:03

of the railroad companies for only having

29:05

one set of tracks to allow something

29:07

like this to happen. Why were three

29:09

trains crammed into ten dangerous minutes

29:11

on a single track in the first

29:13

place? Why had the Providence and Worcester

29:16

Railroad put the most difficult and dangerous

29:18

route on their line under the control

29:20

of a kid who'd only ever worked

29:22

as a breakman until a few weeks

29:24

ago? Why wasn't there some sort of

29:27

signal at the switch letting the conductors

29:29

know whether a line was free rather

29:31

than leaving it up to schedules and

29:33

watches in the first place? Why didn't

29:35

the railroad provide its conductors with reliable

29:38

time pieces by the way, or at

29:40

least pay them well enough that they

29:42

could afford to buy them? And maybe

29:44

most importantly of all, was the Milkman's

29:46

watch really running slow in the first

29:48

place? Not according

29:51

to Putnam's lawyer, who testified at the

29:53

inquest that when Putnam had set out

29:55

of Uxbridge at 6.25 a.m. he had

29:57

keyed the milkman's watch up with the

30:00

Uxbridge station clock. Could the

30:02

Milkman's watch have run so

30:04

poorly that it lost two

30:06

minutes in an hour? Maybe,

30:08

but not according to the

30:10

engineer, Ephraim Gates. He testified

30:12

that he'd compared watches with

30:15

Putnam right before they made

30:17

the decision to run the

30:19

switch, and at that point

30:21

they were within five seconds

30:23

of one another. Yet, the

30:25

conductor of the Worcester train

30:27

testified that when he compared

30:29

watches with Putnam after the

30:31

accident, there was a two-minute

30:34

discrepancy. So, was the watch

30:36

at fault? Or was it

30:38

the complex labyrinth of local

30:40

times? With what reporting is

30:42

preserved, it's impossible for us

30:44

here to say in the

30:46

present. But, it must not

30:48

have been too easy for

30:50

the people in 1853 to

30:53

say either. Ultimately, the Valley

30:55

Falls collision precipitated a number

30:57

of common-sense safety changes along

30:59

New England railroads. Electric signals

31:01

were added, along with a

31:03

second set of tracks along

31:05

the Boston switch, railroads began

31:07

to supply conductors with watches.

31:10

That still left the one

31:12

issue, though. What if it

31:14

wasn't the watch, but the

31:16

time? This became the major

31:18

impetus for the railroad companies

31:20

to start doing something. Because

31:22

also beforehand, every railroad company...

31:24

had its own separate time

31:26

signal system. So it was

31:29

realized that this probably was

31:31

a foretelling of more damage.

31:33

Luckily, there was a guy

31:35

in Boston with a solution.

32:09

In his teenage years, William Cranch

32:12

Bond, or W.C., had two

32:14

experiences that shaped his entire life.

32:16

When he was 15, he built

32:18

his first clock, and when he

32:20

was 17, he saw his first

32:22

solar eclipse. Bond's father was a

32:25

clockmaker and owner of the William

32:27

Bond clock shop at 9

32:29

Park Street in Boston. So

32:31

W.C. probably would have been

32:33

stuck with clocks whether he

32:35

liked them or not. Fortunately

32:37

for him, he did! And

32:39

fortunately for him, his vocation

32:41

dovetailed very nicely with his

32:43

avocation. Like Christian Huygens before

32:45

him, W.C. Bonds, the clockmaker,

32:47

also became an accomplished amateur

32:49

astronomer. By the late 1830s,

32:51

he was both the best clockmaker

32:53

and the best astronomer in all

32:56

of Boston, and those two things

32:58

were becoming even more intertwined. In the

33:00

18 teams, he'd taken a trip

33:02

to Europe. to observe observatories, especially

33:05

the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. When

33:07

he returned, he started collecting astronomical

33:09

instruments to build his own observatory,

33:12

which he sorta kind of did

33:14

in 1839. That was the year

33:16

Harvard University allowed him,

33:19

essentially, to name himself, astronomical observer

33:21

to the university. It wasn't

33:23

a real position, and there

33:25

wasn't a real observatory, but what

33:27

did Harvard care of some hobbyists

33:30

wanted to play pretend. Then, in

33:32

February of 1843, an enormous comet

33:34

appeared in the sky. By March,

33:36

it was so bright, it could be seen

33:39

in broad daylight, and had a tail so

33:41

long, it appeared to cut the sky. On

33:43

top of that, it appeared to graze

33:45

the sun itself, and as it

33:48

got closer, it grew brighter and

33:50

brighter. The Great March comet was

33:52

the most conspicuous object anyone alive

33:54

had ever seen in the sky,

33:56

and it was the center of

33:59

conversation not just for astronomers,

34:01

but for the wider public, for

34:03

weeks. Suddenly, having an astronomical observatory

34:06

and an official astronomical observer sounded

34:08

to Harvard to be a much

34:11

better idea than it had previously.

34:13

They raised money for the construction

34:15

of a formal observatory, designed and

34:18

overseen by W.C. Bond, who also

34:20

purchased a 15-inch refracting telescope from

34:22

Germany, equal to the largest in

34:25

the world. On June 24th, 1847,

34:27

the Harvard College Observatory opened with

34:29

Bond as director. He was also

34:32

still in charge of his father's

34:34

clock shop downtown, and W.C. saw

34:37

an opportunity to meld his two

34:39

jobs. The observatory could, through precise

34:41

observations of known stars, pinpoint local

34:44

time with a rare amount of

34:46

precision. Bond, then, could use the

34:48

observatory in Cambridge to set his

34:51

clocks in Boston. The only question

34:53

was how to convey the information

34:55

between the two locations. Not too

34:58

difficult. Bond's clocks kept great time,

35:00

so all he had to do

35:03

was sink his best chronometer in

35:05

the morning at the observatory and

35:07

then drive it by wagon down

35:10

to the clock shop each day.

35:12

Not too difficult, but a little

35:14

bit tedious. So, in 1851, he

35:17

replaced the Daily wagon trip with

35:19

a telegraph signal. Harvard

35:28

and Bond soon started selling

35:30

access to their time signal,

35:32

and Chief among the buyers

35:34

were the nearby railroads, who

35:36

set their Boston time as

35:38

Harvard Observatory time plus two

35:40

minutes. After the Valley Falls

35:42

collision, it was decided that

35:44

adherence to Bond's time signal

35:46

should be mandatory for all

35:48

nearby railroads. This, in effect,

35:50

was America's first time zone.

35:53

It didn't really have any

35:55

geographical boundaries or shape. It

35:57

was more like a spindly

35:59

spider web running along the

36:01

tele- and railroad lines, reaching

36:03

out tendrils from Boston to

36:05

Providence, Hartford, Augusta, Bond had,

36:07

to a very small degree,

36:09

inadvertently begun the standardization of

36:11

time in the United States.

36:13

But what he'd done to

36:15

a far greater extent was

36:17

begun the commodification of time

36:20

in the United States. By

36:23

the 1870s, the Harvard College Observatory

36:26

was bringing in thousands of

36:28

dollars in time subscriptions per

36:30

year, and they weren't alone.

36:32

Samuel Langley became the director

36:35

of the then beleaguered Allegheny

36:37

Observatory at the University of

36:39

Pittsburgh in 1867. In order

36:41

to raise funds for the

36:43

observatory's restoration, he began selling

36:45

its time signal. Allegheny time

36:47

soon was taken up by

36:49

over 300 locations over a

36:51

span of 2,500 miles. Even

36:53

Harvard and Allegheny Time were small

36:55

fish though, compared to the U.S.

36:57

Naval Observatory. The Naval Observatory had

36:59

one of the most precise timekeeping

37:01

systems in the whole entire world.

37:03

And for good reason. Nobody needed

37:05

to know the exact time more

37:08

than sailors, for whom timing was

37:10

the best way of figuring out

37:12

their longitudinal position, and no sailors

37:14

needed to navigate more precisely than

37:16

naval ones. But the U.S. Naval Observatory

37:18

didn't have a great way of

37:20

distributing its time. It had a big

37:22

time ball in Washington DC, but obviously

37:25

U.S. naval ships were all over

37:27

the place and needed something better than

37:29

that. So, in 1865, the Naval

37:31

Observatory entered into an arrangement

37:34

with Western Union, the largest

37:36

private telegraph company in the

37:38

country. Western Union would transmit

37:40

the observatory's time signal to

37:42

all U.S. Navy yards, free

37:44

of charge, twice daily, at

37:46

noon and midnight. In exchange,

37:48

Western Union would get access

37:50

to that signal for their

37:52

own purposes and would sell

37:54

a perfectly adjusted local time

37:56

to anyone willing to pay. In

37:58

cities and towns... towns across the

38:01

country, Western Union began building time

38:03

balls onto their local offices, and

38:05

these then became the de facto

38:08

official times for those cities and

38:10

towns. This did little to simplify

38:12

things. To the contrary, there were

38:15

by the 1870s even more local

38:17

times than there had been in

38:19

1853 when the trains collided. A

38:22

Senate report estimated that by 1880,

38:24

there were 8,000 local times across

38:27

the United States and Canada. In

38:29

most places, more than one was

38:31

being followed at the same time.

38:34

The town's local mean time and

38:36

its railroad time. If said town

38:38

was furnished by more than one

38:41

rail company, it was bound to

38:43

have even more times. Even though

38:45

the railroads had worked out ways

38:48

to largely avoid colliding with one

38:50

another, although it should be said

38:52

not entirely, there was another group

38:55

who was beginning to have complaints

38:57

over Western Union and the Navy's

38:59

near monopoly over American time. The

39:02

United States... Army. In 1870, Joseph

39:04

Henry, the Secretary of the Smithsonian,

39:07

urged Congress to pass a law

39:09

that would require Army bases across

39:11

the country to take and share

39:14

meteorological reports via telegraph. This would

39:16

allow for some measure of weather

39:18

prediction. seemed like a good idea,

39:21

so Congress did pass that law,

39:23

and the task of organizing and

39:25

reporting the nation's meteorological data fell

39:28

to the Army Signal Service. With

39:30

Army weather observers all around the

39:32

country taking simultaneous measurements of temperature,

39:35

barometric pressure, wind speed, direction, and

39:37

cloud conditions, the U.S. Army Signal

39:39

Corps could be the most accurate

39:42

weather forecaster in the history of

39:44

the world. If... They could figure

39:47

out what fucking time it was.

40:00

Every Signal Corps field office had

40:02

its own stupid time, if not

40:04

several, and figuring out how to

40:07

order their reports so that they

40:09

could be drawn into a coherent

40:11

picture of the nation's weather was

40:13

a dizzyingly difficult task. In 1875,

40:16

the head of the Weather Service,

40:18

Cleveland Abbey, suggested that it would

40:20

be simpler to unify time than

40:23

to unify the reporting. He brought

40:25

his proposal to the American Meteorological

40:27

Society. And together the AMS and

40:30

the army began lobbying for splitting

40:32

the United States into four time zones

40:34

based around Greenwich time. You know who

40:37

didn't like the army plan? The Navy.

40:39

They had a sweet deal going with

40:41

Western Union and they weren't about to

40:43

have some, let's Google derogatory terms for

40:46

the army here. Trench monkey? Is that

40:48

as good as they get? And we're

40:50

sure it's not racist? Eh, I don't

40:53

love it. They had a sweet deal

40:55

going with Western Union, and they weren't

40:57

about to have some trench monkeys screw

40:59

it all up. No, I hate it.

41:02

Western Union and the Naval Observatory

41:04

began a whisper campaign against the

41:07

Signal Corps' time plan. More importantly,

41:09

they drafted legislation for Congress,

41:11

which would establish Navy-controlled time

41:13

balls in all American ports.

41:15

The bill went nowhere, but

41:17

neither did the Signal Corps'

41:19

time zone plan. It seemed

41:21

that not even the United

41:23

States government had the power

41:25

to shape time, but there

41:27

was a force more powerful

41:29

than the government. The

41:32

Railroads. The fight between army

41:34

and maybe got the attention of

41:36

William F. Allen, the treasurer of

41:38

an organization called the General Time

41:40

Convention. It was the responsibility of

41:43

the convention to coordinate the various

41:45

schedules of the various railroads, such

41:47

that there wasn't another valley falls.

41:49

Allen had long thought the spattering

41:51

of local times to be untenable

41:54

and inefficient, and found the possibility

41:56

that Western Union would codify their

41:58

monopoly over time via... law, unacceptable.

42:00

But even if the government adopted

42:03

some sort of standard time scheme,

42:05

the railroads were probably going to

42:07

hate that too. The two most

42:09

popular ideas of the time were

42:12

those of Abby's five-time zones and

42:14

that of Charles F. Dowd, the

42:16

principle of a lady's seminary in

42:19

Saratoga Springs, New York. Dowd's

42:27

plan had just four time zones.

42:29

But both of these proposals assumed

42:31

that time should shift by an

42:34

hour along regular lines of longitude.

42:36

In Dowd's plan, for instance, the

42:38

prime meridian cut through Washington DC

42:40

and time shifted by an hour

42:42

for every 15 degrees of longitude

42:44

traveled from there. That made sound

42:47

logical, but it was impractical to

42:49

literally draw straight lines down the

42:51

country based on nothing other than

42:53

geometry. But they had to be

42:56

a few problems with it, because

42:58

they couldn't be, the time zones

43:00

are broken up into 15 degree

43:02

increments. But if you do that

43:05

perfectly, you may have a time

43:07

zone in the middle of your

43:09

power. Yeah, houses, streets could become

43:11

the biding line for it. The

43:14

railroads were screwed either way. If

43:16

the Navy eventually won, local time

43:18

would continue to make their services

43:20

overcomplicated and dangerous, not to mention

43:23

that they'd lose an important private

43:25

power struggle with Western Union. If

43:27

the army prevailed, they'd institute some

43:29

sort of standard time, which would

43:32

be good, but whatever map they

43:34

ended up drawing would inevitably screw

43:36

up train schedules all across the

43:38

country. Every railroad in America would

43:41

have to reorganize their entire business.

43:43

So, Allen's idea was for the

43:45

railroads to create their own standard

43:47

time. favorable to their operation, and

43:50

then pretty much foisted upon everybody

43:52

else. No legislation or federal bureaucracy

43:54

required, or welcome. The General Time

43:56

Convention would finally do what it

43:58

said. like it did. Determine time

44:01

for everyone! There were two tricks

44:03

necessary to land this plane. The

44:05

first was to design a system that

44:07

would benefit the railroads. Over the

44:09

years the General Time Convention had

44:11

gotten pretty good at negotiating different

44:14

time tables and schedules among themselves.

44:16

They had to in order to

44:18

avoid train crashes like Valley Falls.

44:20

So, most of the trains that

44:22

traveled any significant distance were used

44:25

to changing their clocks several times

44:27

as they moved through the territory

44:29

of different dominant companies. If

44:31

they could organize this new national

44:33

time system not around lines of

44:35

longitude, but instead around the already

44:37

established break points in their clocks,

44:39

they could keep the disruption of their

44:41

established lines to a minimum. In

44:43

effect, where Americans were in time

44:46

would come down to how the

44:48

railroad companies could keep from having

44:50

to print too many new schedules.

44:52

What made this especially difficult is

44:54

that a lot of these established

44:56

time changes happened at terminals, many

44:58

of which were located smack dab

45:01

in the middle of major cities.

45:03

The map they came up with

45:05

looked almost like the time zones

45:07

you know today, but with all

45:09

kinds of ridiculous swerves and notches

45:12

and teeth and double backs to

45:14

keep everything aligned with train schedules.

45:16

The most conspicuous irregularity

45:18

is probably the Michigan-sized tumor growing

45:20

off of the east side of

45:23

the central time zone so that

45:25

the border will run through Michigan

45:27

Central Station in Detroit. It's weird

45:29

and irrational and ends up splitting

45:32

the city in two. Which captured the

45:34

other difficulty the GTC was facing. If

45:36

the whole thing was to succeed, it

45:38

would need major buy-in. They didn't need

45:41

to get every American town on board,

45:43

but they had to get most of

45:45

them, and they'd need to get them

45:47

on quickly. Pretty nearly all at once.

45:50

If they got a lot of adoption

45:52

right at the start, then any holdouts

45:54

or fence sitters would fall in line

45:56

like dominoes. But without a strong

45:58

enough initial push. would never start

46:01

tumbling. This plan didn't have the

46:03

power of law, it had the

46:05

power of belief. And if that

46:07

belief wasn't loud and wide and

46:10

firm enough, standard time would die

46:12

like Tinkerbell at a dress rehearsal.

46:14

During the planning and exploratory phases

46:17

of the time switch, most of

46:19

those put on the task concluded

46:21

it was impossible. People knew what

46:24

time it was and wouldn't be

46:26

game enough to change. And when

46:28

they didn't change immediately, the wheels

46:30

would come off the wagon before

46:33

it even hit road. Leaving the

46:35

general time convention, more like the

46:37

general mime convention. Like, uh, clowns.

46:40

Mimes like clowns. General clown convention.

46:42

Fine. I don't care. The point

46:44

is, the GTC had what seemed

46:47

like an impossible task in front

46:49

of them. How could they possibly

46:51

get enough people and businesses and

46:53

municipalities and municipalities to go along

46:56

with their time scheme scheme? Especially

46:58

when their map divided things up

47:00

in weird and inconvenient ways for

47:03

their express benefit. And how could

47:05

they possibly get basically everyone to

47:07

turn over, essentially all at once?

47:10

In short, we don't know. On

47:12

October 11th, 1883, the heads of

47:14

every major railroad in the US

47:17

and Canada convened a semi-secret meeting

47:19

of the General Time Convention at

47:21

the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago.

47:23

There they agreed on a map

47:26

a plan and a date the

47:28

map we know the date was

47:30

ambitious November 1883 just more than

47:33

a month away the plan Well,

47:35

that's where the secret part of

47:37

the semi secret meeting comes in

47:40

There is precious little documentation of

47:42

how the GTC proceeded We can

47:44

make some educated guesses though. Because

47:46

the railroads were all unified around

47:49

the new time system, and since

47:51

most people in municipalities used time

47:53

mainly to keep track of the

47:56

railroads, there was probably a good

47:58

amount of... well-justified fear that ignoring

48:00

the new time zones would lead

48:03

to chaos. Any city or town

48:05

that got their time from one

48:07

of the major observatories, Harvard, Yale,

48:09

or even Langley's Allegheny, had nearly

48:12

no choice but to change over

48:14

because the railroads managed to convince

48:16

those observatories that joining with them

48:19

was their best bet. Even Western Union, the

48:21

big-time competitor to the GTC bowed to the

48:23

railroads, and that one is a bit mysterious.

48:25

It could be that the railroads made an

48:27

offer to the naval observatory that they couldn't

48:30

refuse. There was almost certainly a lot of

48:32

bribery and strong arming on. Just as likely,

48:34

the GTC may have bluffed Western Union into

48:36

thinking the fight was over, that they'd already

48:38

secured what they needed to make the switch,

48:41

and that if the telegraph company and the

48:43

Navy didn't get on board the train, they'd

48:45

be left behind. This

48:47

projection of strength seems to have

48:49

been the main thing the GTC had

48:52

on their side. They couldn't convince every

48:54

local mayor or city council to join

48:56

them, but they could cajole a lot

48:59

of them into hearing the plan out.

49:01

Once they'd done that, they could go

49:03

to some other mayor or council and say,

49:05

just so you know, the guys next door

49:08

are in. So if you say no, it's

49:10

gonna cause trouble. They got

49:12

a lot of local officials to hold

49:14

public meetings with railroad officials, where those

49:17

officials would explain the workings of the

49:19

switch. These details would then get reported

49:21

in the papers, and said officials would

49:24

soon realize that readers were now expecting

49:26

the time switch, and that if they

49:28

didn't agree to it, things were likely

49:30

to get messy. There even seemed to

49:33

be places where the railroads took

49:35

out advertisements in newspapers, explaining the

49:37

switch when no officials had agreed

49:39

to even hear them out. But

49:41

once it was in print,

49:43

what choice did they have? Why

49:45

was the public seemingly eager

49:47

to make the change? Well,

49:49

that's the other clever part

49:52

of the railroad's plan. They

49:54

made, Sunday November 18th, 1883,

49:57

something like an event, a

49:59

holiday. even. They called it the

50:01

day of two noons. Because in

50:03

much of the country, that was

50:05

what was to happen. Noon would

50:07

strike once in the local time

50:09

people had long known, and then

50:11

sometime later, maybe two minutes, maybe

50:14

half an hour, noon would strike

50:16

again. From railroad stations and city

50:18

halls, churches and civic centers, bells

50:20

would chime and then chime once

50:22

more. Timeballs would drop, raise, and

50:24

drop again. There was opposition, naturally.

50:26

People wondered if this was all

50:28

just a scheme by the railroads,

50:30

which, yeah, kind of. Or if

50:32

it was the watchmakers who were

50:34

behind it all. An article in

50:36

the New York Herald said that

50:38

everyone knew that once a clock

50:40

had been taken to a watchmaker

50:42

once, it spent the rest of

50:44

its existence, quote, passing between his

50:46

hands and those of its owner.

50:48

It was but natural, then, to

50:51

suppose that an alteration of time

50:53

which would necessitate the setting of

50:55

thousands of watches, and their subsequent

50:57

subjection to the malignant arts of

50:59

the watchmaker, was only a gigantic

51:01

scheme of plunder contrived in their

51:03

interest. The Indianapolis Sentinel was even

51:05

more militant in its dislike of

51:07

the new system. Writing, railroad time

51:09

is to be the time of

51:11

the future. The sun is no

51:13

longer to boss the job. People,

51:15

55 million of them, must eat,

51:17

sleep, and work, as well as

51:19

travel by railroad time. It is

51:21

a revolt, a rebellion. The sun

51:23

will be requested to rise and

51:25

set by railroad time. The planets

51:27

must, in the future, make their

51:30

circuits by such timetables as railroad

51:32

magnates arrange. People will have to

51:34

marry by railroad time and die

51:36

by railroad time. Ministers will be

51:38

required to preach by railroad time.

51:40

Banks will open and close by

51:42

railroad time. In fact, the railroad

51:44

convention will set about adjusting their

51:46

affairs in accordance with its decree.

51:48

We presume the sun, moon,

51:50

and stars will

51:52

make an attempt

51:54

to ignore the

51:56

orders of the

51:58

railroad convention, but

52:00

they too will

52:02

have to give

52:04

in at last. Most,

52:11

however, were a touch less dramatic. In

52:14

New York, where crowds gathered to

52:16

watch the timeball drop at noon and

52:18

again four minutes later, also at

52:20

noon, one editorial noted a shimmering bright

52:22

side. The man who goes to

52:24

church in New York today will hug

52:26

himself with delight to find that

52:28

the noon service has been curtailed to

52:31

the extent of nearly four minutes,

52:33

while every old maid on Beacon Hill

52:35

in Boston will rejoice tonight to

52:37

discover that she is younger by almost

52:39

16 minutes. The

52:44

day of two noons went off

52:46

practically without a hitch, although the

52:48

Chicago Tribune reported that operators at train

52:50

stations around the country were on

52:52

pins and needles as they breathlessly stopped

52:54

their clocks at noon, waited with

52:56

stopwatches in hand the allotted period and

52:59

restarted them again. In

53:01

all, 70 of the 100 largest

53:03

American cities made the change on

53:05

November 18th, enough so that the

53:07

remaining 30 couldn't help but give

53:09

in in short order. Within

53:11

a year, 85 % of the United

53:13

States and Canada were on railroad

53:15

time. Within another year, local

53:17

time was all but forgotten. All

53:20

of this without any government action,

53:22

no statute or law, no vote

53:24

or public debate. The railroad's

53:26

time zones stood as the

53:28

de facto standard time for

53:31

North America until 1918, when

53:33

Congress passed daylight savings time

53:35

in order to ration gasoline

53:37

usage and in the process

53:39

codified less railroad -friendly, more

53:41

commonsensical time zones. But

53:44

with exceptions like Detroit and Florida, the

53:46

new official system walked the same lines

53:48

as the old ones. That's

53:52

everything. Well, everything in America,

53:54

but even though the adoption of standard times

53:56

in other parts of the world led to

53:58

many other interesting stories. looking at you New

54:01

Zealand, we're already two weeks behind New

54:03

Year's. So if we're going to get

54:05

this countdown down, we'd better get down

54:07

with it down. Down? So

54:10

grab your champagne

54:12

glass and your nearest

54:14

consenting partner and

54:16

join with me and

54:18

Jamie Kennedy in

54:21

celebrating the New Year

54:23

a little too

54:25

late. 10, 9, 8,

54:27

7, 6, 5,

54:30

4, 3, 2, 1,

54:32

Happy New Year! Music

54:37

for this episode provided by

54:40

Epidemic Sound and Blue.Sessions. A

54:42

very special thanks to Francine

54:44

Jackson for sharing her time

54:46

and expertise and enthusiasm. Special

54:48

thanks also go out to,

54:51

wow, a whole lot of

54:53

people. Count them, Cheyenne Barbeau,

54:55

Amy Hall and Calder, Keith

54:57

Jensen, Brian Hamtrick, Josh Cornett,

54:59

Dimitri Iglitsen, Hugo Schlange, Jennifer

55:02

Howlett, Brendan Wood, Esther Berry

55:04

Benton, Malchru X, Josh Patsy

55:06

and Alicia Marcellus. You

55:08

specifically made this episode possible along

55:11

with all the other patrons who

55:13

donate to keep the constant constant.

55:15

For their trouble, they get ad

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heading to patreon.com/the constant now. Just

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your iPhone or Apple will take

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extra money from you. Until next

55:32

time, from Chicago, Illinois, the birthplace

55:34

of time. Kind

55:36

of overstating it, this has been

55:38

the constant.