Sandford Fleming

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Sir Sandford Fleming, 1892

Sir Sandford Fleming (born January 7, 1827 in Kirkcaldy , Fife, Scotland , † July 22, 1915 in Halifax , Nova Scotia , Canada ) was an important Canadian engineer of Scottish origin.

Life

During his time as chief engineer at the Canadian Pacific Railway, he mainly worked as a land surveyor for the expansion of the routes beyond Winnipeg to the west.

World time

Fleming promoted the counting of hours from 1 to 24 and the world time . His initiative led to the Washington Meridian Conference in 1884 , at which the meridian was recommended by Greenwich as a reference meridian for world time, among other things. The following division of the earth into 24 time zones only had the advantage that it reduced the previously used large number of local times to at least practically 24 local times. He remained true to his utopia, "that an enlightened cosmopolitanism would ultimately need nothing more than a unified universal day" with world time.

Submarine cables

Later he arranged for the laying of a submarine cable through the Pacific Ocean between Canada and Australia, whereby the English state telegraph network was closed worldwide. For this he was ennobled in 1897 as Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George and was henceforth allowed to use the suffix "Sir".

Worldwide honors

He was the founder of the Royal Canadian Institute, a science organization based in Toronto, and in 1882 a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada . Sandford had been a member of the Freemasons Association ( St. Andrew's Lodge No. 1, York) since November 14, 1854 .

literature

  • Clark Blaise : The Taming of Time: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Invention of Universal Time . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-007109-3 (Original title: Time Lord. Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time . Pantheon Books, New York, NY 2000, ISBN 0-375-40176-8 ; Time lord: the remarkable Canadian who missed his train, and changed the world , AA Knopf, Toronto, Canada © 2000, ISBN 0-676-97252-7 ).
  • Sandford Fleming . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
  • Fleming, Sir Sandford . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 10 : Evangelical Church - Francis Joseph I . London 1910, p. 494 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Molly Elizabeth Kalkstein: Making time, [Towson, MD] 2001, OCLC 48590398 (Thesis (MFA Master of Fine Arts) Goucher College, Towson, Maryland, United States 2001, X, 146 pages, XI-XX).
  • David R. Richeson: Sandford Fleming: and the establishment of a Pacific cable Edmonton, Alta 1972, OCLC 2686659 (Thesis University of Alberta 1972, 360 pages, Microfilm of typescript, Central Microfilm Unit, Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa 1973. 1 reel 35 mm, Canadian theses on microfilm, No. 13541)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clark Blaise : The Taming of Time: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Invention of Universal Time . Frankfurt a. M .: S. Fischer, 2001. ISBN 3-10-007109-3 . P. 236
  2. ↑ Sandford Fleming Freemasons on the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon website , accessed May 25, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Fleming, Sandford
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian engineer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Kirkcaldy , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1915
Place of death Halifax, Nova Scotia , Canada