{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2","title":"Time The Modern and Postmodern Experience","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2","id":"d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2","uuid":"d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2","title":"Time The Modern and Postmodern Experience","normalized_title":"timethemodernandpostmodernexperience","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":178,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20The%20Modern%20and%20Postmodern%20Experience","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d3ee5fbb-1124-4191-99e1-3139801e0da2/search"},"page":{"printed_page":24,"pdf_page":24,"physical_index":24,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"89783a7e849099df2495464eb4f851a52df42edc6a6b48d8ebfbd749929b174a"},"chapter":"An Embarrassment of Proper Times:","content":"Officially, it began unspectacularly and almost, disregarding the consequences, trivially. In 1884 one of the then numerous international conferences was held which were striving for a standardization of norms, weights and measures.9 Out of practical, commercial and political necessity, states were pressing for international agreements which were intended to introduce more clarity, convertibility and rationality into the confusing variety of local, regional and national standards. No bold utopias inspired the advocates of standardization, but the sober calculations of engineers, industrialists, civil servants and army officers. At the international meridian conference, the object was to divide the world into twenty-four timezones each with an hour's difference and to draw an obligatory international date line. A decision had to be taken about where ‘east' and where 'west' was, since it followed from this which places in the world would be chronologically ‘ahead of’ or 'behind' other places. Such a decision was arbitrary, of course, but temporal coordination at an international level could only result if there was a temporal dividing line which met with international assent. Since then, the 180th meridian at the same distance east and west of Greenwich has been regarded as the international date line. Crossing it eastwards, travellers gain a day, while in the opposite direction they lose a day. If it is Tuesday evening in Tokyo, it is Tuesday morning in New York and not Wednesday morning, for instance. Since then, New York has been all of fourteen hours ‘behind' Tokyo and not ten hours ‘ahead'. The standardization of world time had direct technological and also military benefits. Unlike in the Middle Ages, when it was still customary to be woken for battle by cocks which had been brought along, the machinery of war now also required a coordination which was as accurate as possible. Equally, world time was the condition for the coordination of the many local systems of time with one another, for establishing timetables without which the spatial extension and concentration of the transport network would have been inconceivable.\n\n24\n\nThe Illusion of Simultaneity","previous_page":23,"next_page":25}