Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America (review)

Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America. By Ian R. Bartky. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi+310. $45.

Where do standards come from? How were weights and measures established, and how was the meaning of the unit measurement of time made universal? How did we develop a standard time such that 1:00 p.m. anywhere around the city of Chicago was the same, yet exactly one hour earlier than Boston? Such deceptively simple questions are the central topic of Ian Bartky's Selling the True Time. For those who take recognized standards, such as time, for granted, this book has much to offer in ferreting out a rather obscure history and presenting it in a dispassionate form.

Bartky's central thesis revolves around a struggle between warring parties seeking to claim control over the meaning and setting of "standard time." The problem is not straightforward; in the middle of the nineteenth century any of a number of outcomes could have prevailed. The setting of a standard time was tied to the attempt to establish the value of localized knowledge of astronomy. As with remnants of historical regional competition, every city of any repute wanted to have an astronomical society or organization that offered intellectual leadership and scientific prestige. Bartky recounts the competition among astronomical societies, each of which had decided that one means of establishing prominence was to become the purveyors of "true time."

The centrality to the story of astronomy and the movement of celestial bodies can only be understood historically. The issue that occupied many localities where there were people with astronomical competencies was "whose telling of time" would ultimately prevail in determining such mundane matters as railroad schedules. There was a Boston time and an Albany time, a Chicago time and a Detroit time. Not only did time between cities and towns vary, but so did time within cities and towns. Which clock in a town set the "true" time could be a matter of considerable debate and egotistical posturing. Although city fathers and mothers clearly saw the need for a standard of time, there was contention about whether time would based on Greenwich time (the standard accepted by the U.S. Naval Observatory) or on something else. To set clocks to Greenwich time was to destroy one legitimate basis for the authority of local astronomical societies.

In the end, science prevailed over parochialism, but not without a battle. Bartky's account is entertaining and luxurious with detail. On another level, however, the book could have gone much further in laying out a thesis, situating the problem, and then following the evidence. As it is, readers get little idea of the importance of the issues until near the end of the book. The introduction does not give a hint of what is to come, and the lack of a definitive argument presented up front will force readers to struggle to find the essence of what is otherwise a fine book.

Amy K. Glasmeier

 

Dr. Glasmeier is professor of geography and regional planning at the Pennsylvania State University and author of Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the Watch Industry, 1795-2000 (2000).

Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer.

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