Sandford Fleming

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Sandford Fleming : biography

January 7, 1827 – July 22, 1915

Sir Sandford Fleming, (January 7, 1827 – July 22, 1915) was a Scottish-born Canadian engineer and inventor. He proposed worldwide standard time zones,Sandford Fleming was not the first to propose universal time and worldwide standard time zones. Both were invented 21 years earlier by the Italian mathematician Quirico Filopanti in his book Miranda! published in 1858. However, his idea was unknown outside the pages of his book until long after his death, so it did not influence the adoption of time zones during the 19th century. Filopanti proposed 24 hourly time zones, which he called "longitudinal days", the first centered on the meridian of Rome. He also proposed a universal time to be used in astronomy and telegraphy. See from the University of Bologna, Italy. designed Canada’s first postage stamp, left a huge body of surveying and map making, engineered much of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada and founder of the Royal Canadian Institute, a science organization in Toronto.

Inventor of worldwide standard time

After missing a train in 1876 in Ireland because its printed schedule listed p.m. instead of a.m., he proposed a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the centre of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian.Clark Blaise, Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the creation of standard time (New York, First Vintage Books: 2000) pp.81-82. ISBN 0-375-40176-8 At a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute on February 8, 1879 he linked it to the anti-meridian of Greenwich (now 180°). He suggested that standard time zones could be used locally, but they were subordinate to his single world time, which he called Cosmic Time. He continued to promote his system at major international conferencesIncluding Geographical Congress at Venice in 1881, and at a meeting of the Geodetic Association at Rome in 1883 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_29/October_1886/Universal_Time , page 799 including the International Meridian Conference of 1884. That conference accepted a different version of Universal Time, but refused to accept his zones, stating that they were a local issue outside its purview. Nevertheless, by 1929 all of the major countries of the world had accepted time zones.

Later life

In 1880 he retired from the world of surveying, and took the position of Chancellor of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He held this position for his last 35 years, where his former Minister George Monro Grant was principal from 1877 until Grant’s death in 1902. Not content to leave well enough alone, he tirelessly advocated the construction of a submarine telegraph cable connecting all of the British Empire, the All Red Line, which was completed in 1902. He also kept up with business ventures, becoming in 1882 one of the founding owners of the Nova Scotia Cotton Manufacturing Company in Halifax. In 1880 he served as the vice president of the Ottawa Horticultural Society.. His accomplishments were well known worldwide, and in 1897 he was knighted by Queen Victoria. He was a freemason. In his later years he retired to his house in Halifax, later deeding the house and the 95 acres (38 hectares) to the city, now known as Sir Sandford Fleming Park (Dingle Park). He also kept a residence in Ottawa, and was buried there, in the Beechwood Cemetery.

The town of Fleming, Saskatchewan (located on the Canadian Pacific Railway) was named in his honour in 1882. Fleming Hall was built in his honour at Queen’s in 1901, and rebuilt after a fire in 1932. It was the home of the university’s Electrical Engineering department. In Peterborough, Ontario, Fleming College, a Community College of Applied Arts and Technology bearing his name, was opened in 1967, with additional campuses in Lindsay/Kawartha Lakes, Haliburton, and Cobourg. Also, the main building of University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and Sanford Fleming Academy are named after Fleming (Sandford Fleming building).