In 1883, much of the nation reset its clocks on ‘the day of two noons’

On Nov. 18, 1883, the scene at a Chicago railroad station reminded a Tribune reporter of the biblical story of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still.

“At about a quarter to 12 o’clock, Chicago time, the conductors, engineers, and other train-men stopped in one by one, each having his time piece in his hand, and watching closely the hands on the dials,” the Tribune’s reporter wrote. “Depot-Master Cropsy had his chronometer under a powerful magnifying glass to be sure that he made no mistake. When the clock on the wall of the office, by which the running of the trains in the depot is regulated, stood at twelve, it was stopped.”

Nine minutes and thirty-two seconds later, it was reset to noon, as were clocks in other railroad stations and jewelers’ shop windows. “The general greeting on the street yesterday was, “Have you the new time?”

As similar scenes took place all across America, newspapers dubbed Nov. 18 “The day of two noons.” It was the logical consequence of the Time-Table Conference that Chicago hosted the previous month.

The annual conference gave railroad leaders an opportunity to exchange timetables. But they called this conference to rectify incompatible time standards.

“Everybody knows places in which railroad time may be one thing or another, and ‘city time’ may be still a third,” the Tribune noted on the eve of the conference that met at 231 S. LaSalle St. in the Grand Pacific Hotel. “There are 300 places in which one railroad has one standard, another road has another.”

The Grand Pacific Hotel, where the convention was held, was demolished. It was replaced by what was for many years the Continental Illinois Bank building but is now called the Central Standard Building in honor of the site’s place in timekeeping history.

Traditionally, the time of day has been determined by setting noon as the moment the sun is directly overhead. That is why it is called midday. Counting back and forth from that point, the hours are labeled ante meridiem and post meridiem — a.m. and p.m.— meaning before and after noon.

That worked fine when people rarely ventured far from home. Later, a traveler would have to be a mathematical whiz to determine the time at his destination based on the noon hour at home.

Keeping time on a journey required the repeated twisting of a watch’s hour and minute hands. There were 23 local times in Indiana and 27 in Michigan and Illinois.

That anarchy enabled a train to arrive at its destination an earlier hour than its departure time. Farmers and manufacturers couldn’t tell clients what time to pick up their purchases at their town’s railroad station.

It was inherently dangerous for railroads to set their clocks as they pleased, especially where their lines crossed or they shared a length of tracks. Conductors on different railroads would look at their timepiece and each assumed that his train had the right of way.

In August 1853, there was fatal head-on train collision in Rhode Island because the conductors on the two trains were on different time systems and had no idea their paths were about to cross.

Facing similar problems, the British had established a time standard with its prime meridian set as the latitude of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. That line ran south through France, making it logical for France to adopt it, except for the country’s disdain for playing second fiddle to the English.

But the French decided to go along. In 1911, on the “night of two midnights” French time was set back 9 minutes and 21 seconds to match Greenwich mean time.

“Many people in cafes and nocturnal restaurants feted the old and new midnights,” wrote a New York Times correspondent. He also took note of a scientist who said that “to save French pride, the government might have chosen some city town of this country, which lies exactly on the meridian of Greenwich, as a point for standard observations.“

In the United States, “A System of National Times for Railroads” was proposed by Charles F. Dowd in 1870. A co-principal of a women’s seminary in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., he looked up the latitude and longitude of 8,000 locations and concluded that the U.S. should be divided into four time zones. Every location in a zone would be on the same time.

His plan was rejected and he died in 1904, having been thrown 30 feet by the No. 8 train of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Association. The coroner said the railroad was responsible for leaving its Saratoga crossing “ungated and dangerous.“

The railroads hadn’t adopted Dowd’s proposal, but William F. Allen, an engineer and publisher of timetables, later promoted it. In 1881, fearing that the government would impose a time system on them, a consortium of railroads leaders commissioned Allen to study the issue.

His proposal differed from others in having time zones divided at railroad stations or junctions, rather than at states’ borders, rivers or other landscape features.

That convinced railroad leaders to make him the secretary of the 1883 Convention, where he quickly sold his plan.

“The Sun will be requested to rise and set by railroad time,” the Indianapolis Sentinel wrote that November. “People will have to marry by railroad time, and die by railroad time. Ministers will have to preach by railroad time — banks will open and close by railroad time.“

The telegraph instantly transmitted news of the time change from Chicago to cities all across the nation; included was the starting time, noon on Nov. 18.

Attorney General Benjamin Brewster almost threw a wrench in the clockwork. He ruled that the government’s clocks could not be changed without the approval of Congress.

But the superintendent of the Naval Observatory ignored Brewster’s order. The nation’s official timekeeper, he began telegraphing railroad time to subscribers of the observatory’s time-check service.

In New York, a city dependent on commerce, the mayor ordered every clock the city owned to show Standard Time.

James Hamblet, the manager of Western Union’s telegraph service, stopped the pendulum on its standard clock, according to The New York Times, “and with it ceased the corresponding clicks on similar instruments in many jewelry stores and watch stores throughout the city.”

Three minutes and 58.38 seconds later, Hamblet set the pendulum in motion, and the clicking resumed downstream.

There were two clocks in the waiting room of the Pennsylvania railroad station in Jersey City, N.J. One was marked “New York Time” the other “Philadelphia Time.” The latter was removed on Nov. 18. The other was relabeled “Standard Time.” The three cities were now in the same time zone.

With a few exceptions, Americans took the changes in stride. A few pious folk were outraged at being taken off God’s time. But this was nothing compared with the English’s sense of being robbed when their country switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, and the day after Sept. 2, 1752, became Sept. 14, 1752.

Louisville, Kentucky, regretted changing to Standard Time, and the following June 28 moved its clocks ahead 18 minutes to get back on solar time.

But in Chicago, a once-contentious issue was resolved by a sign a Tribune reporter saw in jeweler’s shop window: “Set Back Nine Minutes. ”

Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at rgrossman@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com .