Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and divided the earth into 24 zones spaced 15 degrees or one hour apart
(Figure 4.5). By the time it was adopted, Greenwich time was already used by
two-third's of world shipping (Howse 1980). Universal time did not unfold
instantaneously across the world, however. In 1888, Japan adopted it, fol-
lowed by Belgium and the Netherlands in 1892, and, in 1893, Italy and
Austria-Hungary. Also in 1893, Germany passed the Reichs Law, which
mandated a uniform GMT throughout the country, part of the e
ort to unify
the unwieldy collection of localities that formed the new nation-state. The
French, resentful over British success with the Prime Meridian, made Paris
time the legal time of France and Algeria until they could host the Inter-
national Conference on Time in 1912. As Kern (1983:33) notes, the recon-
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figuration of public time and the reinterpretation of private time were very
much linked: “The introduction of World Standard Time created greater
uniformity of shared public time and in so doing triggered theorizing about a
multiplicity of private times that may vary from moment to moment in the
individual.”
Shrinking waters with the steamship
Prior to the steamship's conquest of the world's seas, sail-based ships enjoyed
a brief window of hegemony in which it became the dominant means for
crossing the oceans. New designs in hulls and sails led to ever more rapid and
e
cient means of traveling over water. Ship owners could schedule their
vessels with greater assurance than previously; indeed, prior to this moment
there had been no regularly scheduled service across the Atlantic (Vance
1990). Sailing reached its apex with the clipper ships of the 1840s and early
1850s, which, with large crews and enormous sails, could travel long distances
quickly, such as around South America to California during the Gold Rush.
The ultimate sailing ships came in the mid-nineteenth century, when some
could cover 436 miles in 24 hours, an average of 18.5 knots. Simultaneously,
between 1842 and 1861 Matthew Maury, working in the U.S. Observatory,
produced a series of nautical charts that revolutionized ocean travel by of
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er-
ing detailed understanding of winds and currents, cutting days of
sailing
times that reduced transit periods along major shipping routes from 27 to
58 percent (Knowles 2006). One bene
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ciary of this innovation was the China
Trade so instrumental to the development of New England.
However, sailing technology proved to be increasingly inadequate to the
accelerated tempos of late modernity. In 1815, for example, 2,000 people died
in the Battle of New Orleans, two weeks after the peace treaty ending the war
had been signed in London but before the news had arrived. The era of
sailing ships, e
fi
ective as it was in serving the needs of mercantile capitalism,
drew to a close with the rise of industrial capital and its substantially greater
need to conquer maritime space. Among other things, steamships uncoupled
the movement of people, goods, and information from currents and wind.
Steamships could go upstream as easily as downstream, and could set forth
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