Monday Exposure: Prague's astronomical clock

Prague's astronomical clock, the Orloj, puts on quite a show every day. The wondrous main clock, with four moving parts, was completed in 1410. Later generations have added moving figures, a "Walk of the Apostles," a crowing rooster, and a rotating calendar.

                    1          golden cockerel who crows at the top of the hour

                    1          bell in the clock tower which peals the hours

                    3          sets of mechanisms: the astronomical clock, the calendar clock, and the moving statues

                    3          celestial movements recorded: the Sun, the moon, and the ecliptic revolution of stars

                    4          parts of the astronomical clock which rotate: Sun, moon, outer ring of time, and Zodiacal ring

                    4          moving figures: Vanity (with mirror), a Jewish moneylender (with bag of gold), Death (as skeleton
                                with hourglass and ringing a bell), and a Turk (representing hedonism)

                    4          non-moving figures: a Chronicler, an Angel, an Astronomer, and a Philosopher

                  12          statues of apostles who parade at the doors above the clock every hour

                  12          signs of the Zodiac on the Zodiacal ring

                  12          months on the calendar dial

                  23.93     hours for a Sidereal day (i.e., time reckoned from the Earth's motion relative to the stars)

                  24          hours on the outer ring, with the "24" indicating the time of sunset (Old Czech time)

                  24          hours in Roman numerals (I–XII repeated twice) indicating modern Central European Time

                  24          hours in "Babylonian" time, with twelve hours for daylight (indicated by the curved blue lines on
                                the central dial) and twelve hours for nighttime, the length of each of the hours changing
                                depending upon the time of year

                  28          days of the lunar phase displayed on the clock's moon

                150          years the clock has been continuously repaired and regularly functioning (since 1866)

                365          days listed on the calendar dial, with the current day at the top

                606          years of age for the central astronomical clock

              1490          probable year the calendar was added

              1572          probable year of finish of repairs and perfection of mechanisms which remain largely intact and
                                in use today

              1948          year the clock was reconstructed after damage in World War II

Using the Roman numerals, you can see that I took this photo around 6:45 am. (I work hard for you people.) Using the curved inner sections with the Arabic numerals, you can see that this was the second hour of daylight. The four statues around the clock are, from left to right: Vanity; a Jewish moneylender; Death; and a hedonist Turk.

The calendar face has a rotating outer band with 365 days of the year. Meanwhile, the inner golden circle rotates for the months of the year. While the Astronomer and Philosopher stand to the right, the Chronicler and Angel had been taken away for repair and cleaning.

Two of the Apostles parade by, looking rather warlike with spear and sword.

Death turns his hourglass while the Turk strums his lute.

Every hour the crowds gather to watch the clock's show.

Like this? You might want to check out some further Monday Exposure posts:






Monday Exposure: Lysicrates Monument











Monday Exposure: Stirling Bridge









Monday Exposure: Michelangelo's Pietà

Spine-tingling tales from Scotland

Scotland delights in its tales of misery, mystery, and misfortune. Some tales are historical, like the 15th century "Black Dinner" which inspired Games of Thrones' famous "Red Wedding." Some are mythical, such as the elusive Loch Ness Monster or the dangerous kelpies. Others are fictional, like the Gruffalo.

And some are ghostly and macabre. Trickster faeries. Cutty Sark and the hellish legions. Damn near any Scottish castle worthy of its name has at least one ghost. You might spot the Pink Lady of Stirling, the harpist of Inverary, the handless ghost of Cawdor, a pacing William Wallace at Ardrossan, or perhaps Moaning Myrtle of Hogwarts.

Last year, I collected a few of my favorite stories. As Halloween approaches this year, here are some Scottish tales to get your spine tingling:

 
    Old Man of Storr and the faerie king




 
         Tam o' Shanter and the Brig o' Doon





 
    The ghost piper of Edinburgh Castle




 
         The devil plays cards at Glamis Castle

Monday Exposure: Dancing House in Prague

Prague's modern architectural masterpiece: the Dancing House.

In a city renowned for its abundance of medieval, Baroque, and Art Nouveau architecture, the completion of the "Dancing House" in Prague caused quite a stir.

The previous building was bombed by the United States at the end of World War II, and its rubble finally cleared in 1960. Václav Havel, a famed dissident during the nation's communist era, had lived in the building adjacent to the destroyed site since his childhood. Havel's neighbor, architect Vlado Milunić, suggested using the empty corner site for a building in two parts, as though in dialogue with each other.

After Havel became the Czech Republic's first president in late 1989, the project got off the ground. Milunić eventually secured the services of renowned Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, who designed the building in his inimitable style.

Gehry glibly nicknamed the building "Fred and Ginger," referencing dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Milunić, on the other hand, saw the building as a reflection of his nation's discourse as it left behind the totalitarian Communist regime and explored its new parliamentary democracy. According to Milunić, Gehry later had misgivings about importing a Hollywood theme to the Prague building.

Nowadays, most people refer to it as the Dancing House.

The eight-legged female figure leans in toward the male. Her steel and glass dress sweeps out from her. The male figure is more solid yet still light on his feet, with 99 individually-shaped concrete panels undulating its windows down the block. A steel mop of hair swings in the breeze atop his head.

The Dancing House, unfortunately, is not a home. Nor is it open to visitors. It serves, rather, as office space. However, an upscale restaurant occupies the top floor, offering fantastic views over the Vltava River toward Prague Castle in the distance.

Completed in 1996, the Dancing House was not instantly beloved. But now, two decades on, most residents and visitors acknowledge it as a late-20th century masterpiece. It is the newest gem in a treasure-trove of gorgeous Prague architecture.

The Dancing House overlooks the Vltava River in Prague.

Monday Exposure: Ha'penny Bridge

The Ha'penny Bridge spans the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland.

Erected in 1816 after a year's construction, the Ha'penny Bridge is the oldest iron bridge in Ireland and one of the very oldest such bridges in the world. Its graceful elliptical arch shines as one of the symbols of Dublin.

The builder of the bridge, William Walsh, had been given an ultimatum by the city. His seven ferry boats crossing the River Liffey leaked water and portended doom for passengers. Walsh could choose between repairing his decrepit boats, or building a pedestrian bridge across the river.

He chose the latter.

Three delicate arches span the top of the bridge, capped by lantern-like lamps.

To compensate Walsh the city offered him £3,000 for ending his ferry boat business. Even better, they granted him a 100-year lease on the bridge. As the city's only pedestrian crossing, the bridge and its lengthy lease gave Walsh a monopoly on foot traffic across the river.

His ferries had charged half a penny, and Walsh decided to charge the same for crossing his bridge. This was a safe bet. The city had retained a condition, for one year, allowing it to abolish any toll to cross the bridge if the citizenry of Dublin found the toll to be "objectionable." Since he hadn't changed the cost to cross, the citizenry made no objection.

Hence was born the Ha'penny Bridge.

The bridge remained as the sole pedestrian-only crossing of the river for 183 years, until Dublin erected a Millennium Bridge. Over time, the Ha'penny Bridge accumulated advertisements, bad lighting, strange paint, and rust. Finally, in 2001, the city refurbished the bridge. It was restored to its original glory and returned to its original off-white color.

The half-penny toll proved a durable feature. Though it was raised for a while to a Penny Ha'penny, the cost eventually dropped back down to ha'penny. The toll is now long gone, as are the turnstiles.

When it first opened in 1816, roughly 450 people crossed the bridge daily. Nowadays, it's estimated 30,000 cross Dublin's iconic bridge every day.

During its refurbishment, more than 85% of its railwork was retained, as well as 98% of the total iron of the bridge.

Monday Exposure: Musée du Louvre by the numbers

                9,300,000          visitors in 2014

                            70          percent of visitors who are foreign

                              1          rank in list of most-visited museums in the world

                1,678,790          Facebook likes (as of 20 April 2015)

                        1202          year the medieval Louvre fortress was completed under King Phillip II

                        1546          year King Francis I began removal of the fortress and renovations for palace

                        1793          year the Musée du Louvre opened to the public

Venus de Milo

                          537          paintings on display in 1793 (along with 194 other objects of art)

                     35,000+        works of art on display in 2015

                    380,000+       total number of works in collection

                        9,000         age, in years, of oldest object in museum

                        4.375         square feet of museum's most popular object, the Mona Lisa

Just a few people want to see the Mona Lisa.

                    652,293         square feet of exhibition space

                 4,305,564         square feet of entire Louvre palace complex

                        2,410         windows in museum

                        3,000         locks in museum

                      10,000         stairs in museum

One of the many halls/rooms in the Louvre.

             452,000,000         dollars (approximate) for museum's yearly budget

                             50         percent (approximate) of budget paid by French government

                               0         cost to visit museum for children under age 18

                        2,000         employees (approximate)

                        3,200         LED lights to illuminate exterior of museum

Louvre Museum at night. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Farewell to Blogspot

It's been a long time coming. Long, long, long time. 'Twas well overdue, really.

{Ed.'s note: What's been keeping you?}

Inertia. Laziness. Indecision. Overthinking.

Finally, however, I've pulled the trigger and left the blogspot.com domain behind. (Or, as it appears here in the U.K., blogspot.co.uk.) You may have noticed over the past few days that I went ahead and bought the domain name for www.coloringwithoutborders.com. Actually, I also bought the domain for www.colouringwithoutborders.com, just to avoid any confusion if anyone ever sought that domain.

Ciao, coloringwithoutborders.blogspot.com!

Ye olde blog domain name.

I've been tinkering around the edges of the blog for a few months now. Placed a new photo up top. Added a search bar. Put in some new styling for the comments. Shifted the Monday Exposure posts from an every week to just an occasional basis; I had originally intended those to be just a photo with a quick blurb, but they quickly became longer posts which were dictating my blogging energies.

In the relatively near future — not too fast, nothing on this blog happens quickly — I'll make some more changes. Probably introduce some tabs and organization. Likely some new and better styling. Perhaps some limited social media. These changes are all overdue, as well.

I'm inching my way there.

{Ed.'s note: Thank goodness.}

For now, I'll simply pat myself on the back for this simple but necessary step. Suggestions for the future are welcome. The blog is, bit by bit, growing up.

Ready to take over the world improve incrementally.

Monday Exposure: Temple of Olympian Zeus

The Temple of Olympian Zeus.

The largest temple of ancient Greece was built not by a Greek, but by a Roman.

Begun by Greeks around 520 BC, construction was first abandoned in 510 BC when the tyrants controlling Athens were overthrown. The builders had sought to eclipse the size of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. When they were forced out, however, only the platform and bits of the columns had been completed.

The temple lay untouched for hundreds of years until a Seleucid king restarted it in 174 BC. He set a Roman architect in charge, who tweaked the design to have double rows of 20 columns on each of the long sides, and three rows of eight columns on each end (counting the corners twice). Instead of limestone, the temple would be built with expensive Pentelic marble. But the king died in 164 BC with the temple only partially completed.

In 84 BC, the Roman general Sulla sacked Athens. As part of his booty, he claimed many of the columns and took them back to Rome, where they were incorporated into the Temple of Jupiter atop the Capitoline Hill. Once again, the half-built temple sat abandoned. Rome's first emperor, Augustus, made a small effort to complete the temple in the early years of the first century AD, but not much was done.

Standing on the "city of Hadrian" side of the arch.

Finally, another century later, Rome's emperor Hadrian made the temple a centerpiece of his rebuilding of Athens. Hadrian was an ardent Philhellene. He restarted construction in 124 AD not only of the temple, but also a brand new city adjacent to the decaying cityscape of Athens. At the border of his new town he placed an arch, proclaiming on one side "This is Athens, ancient city of Theseus" and on the other "This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus."

When it was dedicated in 132 AD, the Temple of Olympian Zeus was among the largest structures of the ancient world. It measured approximately 134 feet wide and nearly 360 feet long. One hundred and four massive columns supported the roof. Atop the columns were flowery Corinithian capitals, the first time Corinthian was used on the exterior of a major temple in Greece.

Corinthian capitals atop the columns.

Inside the double and triple rows of columns stood a colossal statue of Zeus. Made in a self-consciously archaic Greek manner from chryselephantine — a wooden structure covered with ivory slabs for skin and gold leaf for garments and accoutrements — the statue was meant to echo the massive statue of Athena inside the Parthenon, within view from the new temple to Zeus. A similarly colossal statue of Hadrian was erected outside the temple, and many other statues and carvings decorated the temple and the surrounding area.

The ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus as seen from atop the Acropolis.

After taking more than six centuries to be completed, the temple enjoyed only 130 years or so before the city of Athens was sacked by a Germanic tribe. The barbarian Herulians greatly damaged the temple, which fell into disuse. By medieval times the marble slabs were frequently culled for use in other buildings. As the Byzantine Empire wound down in the mid-fifteenth century, only 21 of the 104 columns were left.

By the 1800s, when archeologists started carefully examining the site, a mere sixteen columns remained. At that time, they found the hut of stylite atop the pillars. In the medieval era, Christian ascetics would live on top of pillars for years at a time, fasting and praying, their only sustenance from offerings placed in baskets which they would draw up to their huts with ropes. Viewing the stylite hut as an improper Christian incursion on the ancient temple, they tore down the hut to return the ruins to a supposed authentic state.

An 1833 painting by Johann Michael Wittmer.

In this 1858 photo by Dimitris Konstantinou, note the prominent Christian stylite hut atop the ruins.

The temple's columns are 56 feet high. The offending stylite has been removed.

One of the sixteen remaining columns toppled over in a storm in 1852, where it remains. The overturned pillar illustrates how the massive columns were built in segments. These column drums, each weighing several tons, likely were carved at the quarry and then transported to the site for hoisting into place. Inside the drums are holes, in which metal poles were placed to help align the segments and to hold the column together once it was erected.

Note the square and rectangular holes in the column drums.

Though only sixteen columns remain, the immense scale of the project is apparent.

As it stands now, the Temple of Olympian Zeus is just a fragment, much as it was for its first 600+ years. Indeed, in its more than 2,500 years, the temple has stood proudly complete for only 5% of the time. For all of the remainder it has been either incomplete, or in ruins.

Nevertheless, hints of its grandeur — and of the grandeur of its builders, both Greek and Roman — shine through.

Monday Exposure: Michelangelo's Pietà

One of the world's greatest sculptures — perhaps the greatest sculpture — was attacked in 1972 by a mentally disturbed Hungarian. With twelve blows of a hammer, the man knocked more than 100 fragments off the statue, including an arm, an eyelid, and a nose.

Should the sculpture be left in its newly marred condition? Or repaired, but with visible marks indicating the damaged pieces? In the early 1700s, four of the fingers had accidentally broken off when the statue was moved. Although restored in 1736, scholars still argue about whether the restorer placed the fingers exactly as they had been, or if he slightly tweaked their position for a more rhetorical and dramatic pose.

Neither option suited the Vatican. This masterpiece, displayed in St. Peter's Basilica for centuries, had to be restored as closely as possible to the original. It was the crowning sculptural achievement of a sculptor unsurpassed by any other: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. He had described the block of Carrara marble as the most "perfect" he ever used. Of his many sculptures, Michelangelo devoted more time fine-tuning and polishing it than all the rest.

Michelangelo's Pietà sits in a side chapel within St. Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican City.

The Pietà was, in fact, the only sculpture that Michelangelo ever signed.

As the oft-repeated story goes, Michelangelo had completed the sculpture and one morning was admiring it in the mausoleum where it first had been displayed. While there, Michelangelo had:

     . . . observed a number of Lombards who were praising it loudly. One of them asked another the
     name of the sculptor, and he replied, "Our hunchback of Milan." Michelangelo said nothing, but
     he resented the injustice of having his work attributed to another, and that night he shut himself
     in the chapel with a light and his chisels and carved his name on it.

               — Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects,
                    from Cimabue to Our Times (first published in 1550)

It is a bogus story. While Vasari was one of the first art historians, he is notable also for his fictitious and invented anecdotes. Michelangelo had sculpted the sash or band across the Virgin Mary's chest from the outset. The sash bears no relation to her clothing. Its sole purpose is to display a carved inscription stating "Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this."

Sash reads: "MICHAEL A[N]GELUS BONAROTUS FLORENTIN[US] FACIEBA[T]"

Vasari, however, was correct on other points. He opines that the Pietà "displays the utmost limits of sculpture." Indeed, the folds and drapery of the clothes are unequalled. Mary's headdress is impossibly thin. The hair, musculature, even veins and arteries of the body of the dead Jesus are perfect. The composition has layers of subtle triangular structure, such as from the base to the top of Mary's head, or the triangles created by Jesus's body laying across Mary. And even in recline, Jesus's body maintains the classic contrapposto form.

One structural element which can be seen, but not unseen, is the immense size disparity between the Virgin Mary and Jesus. If the two figures were standing, Mary would tower several feet in height above Jesus. However, if the figures had been of ordinary size, Mary would have struggled to hold Jesus's body. Michelangelo worked to conceal Mary's size beneath the voluminous folds of fabric, as well as with her own reclined posture.

Injured Pietà. (Image from Vatican, reproduced by Reuters.)

To repair the magnificent Pietà, the Vatican settled on a process called "integral restoration." They wanted to avoid moving the statue, which might cause it further damage, so they built a laboratory around the statue. Studying the sculpture in situ, and with the help of photographs of the pre-damaged work, scientists and sculptors spent more than five months analyzing each of the more than 100 fragments and putting them back together. Then, with a combination of invisible glue and a powder made from the same type of Carrara marble, they painstakingly reattached the broken pieces. Ten months after the attack, the Pietà was back on display. The result was a restored sculpture with subtle lines showing the reattached pieces.

The reattached nose and fragment of left eyelid are subtly visible.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian attacker, Laszlo Toth, had been hospitalized for insanity. Prior to attacking the Pietà he had moved from Australia to Italy, knowing no Italian, and had repeatedly sent letters seeking to meet the current pope, Paul VI. When attacking the Pietà, Laszlo had yelled "I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead!" After two years of hospitalization, he was released and immediately deported back to Australia. He then lived in a nursing home until his death in 2012.

As for the Pietà, which Vasari described as a "miracle that a once shapeless stone should assume a form that Nature with difficulty produces in flesh," it still resides within the same chapel inside St. Peter's Basilica. Now, however, it rests behind a wall of bulletproof glass, with only the front of the sculpture on display.

Monday Exposure: Burns Monument

Yesterday was Burns Night here in Scotland. Generally held on Robert Burns' birthday (Jan. 25) — though it can be held on any night of the year — a Burns Night celebrates the poetry and life of Scotland's greatest poet. It often includes, among other things, a haggis brought in to the playing of a bagpipe, a recitation of Burns' famous poem Address to a Haggis, a whisky toast to the haggis, a haggis supper, songs and speeches, poetry recitations, and finally a rousing singalong to Auld Lang Syne.

Scotland has many statues and monuments to Burns. The best one, sited in Alloway where Burns was born and raised, was the first major monument to Burns after his untimely death in 1796. Completed in 1823, the monument was built with funds (£3,247) raised from 700 members of the (upper class) public to commemorate Scotland's own "Bard."

The Robert Burns Monument in Alloway, Scotland, where Burns was born.

The monument is actually a small neo-Greek temple, intermixed with some Masonic elements. It rises 70 feet into the air, supported by a triangular base. Within the base are a few statues depicting a scene from Burns' most famous poem, the bawdy Tam o'Shanter. Nine Corinthian pillars, representing the nine Greek Muses, rest atop a circle and a pentagon. A tripod surmounts the dome.

Tam O'Shanter statues by James Thom.

Its architect, Thomas Hamilton, based his Burns temple specifically on the ancient Lysicrates Monument in Athens. He was part of a widespread Greek revival movement in Britain, inspired in large part by a 1762 book, The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece, by authors James "Athenian" Stuart and Nicholas Revett.

Lysicrates Monument in The Antiquities of Athens

Built more than 2,300 years ago, the Lysicrates Monument commemorated a winning Greek chorus in a drama competition, whose job was to chant and sing the poetry for the play. The monument contains a frieze dedicated to Dionysus, the god of wine, which is a fitting counterpoint to the bacchanalian drinking and lusting in Burns' Tam O'Shanter.

Hamilton made use of the Lysicrates Monument and his own Burns Monument just a few years later when building a second Burns monument in Edinburgh. That second monument was so similar to this Alloway monument that Hamilton did not even charge the patrons for the design. The monument in Edinburgh was completed in 1831.

The soffit of the Burns Monument dome has decorative carvings and panels, as well as the elaborately carved Corinthian capitals atop the pillars.

In Alloway, the Burns Monument now stands amidst ornamental gardens adjacent to the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. It overlooks the cottage where Burns was born. Moreover, the monument rises above the River Doon and its famous bridge, the Brig o' Doon, and stands in line with the auld Alloway Kirk. Both the Brig o' Doon and the auld Alloway Kirk figure prominently in Tam o'Shanter, with drunk Tam stumbling upon the Devil and a coven of witches dancing in the ruined kirk (church) and then fleeing the hellish legion over the bridge to safety.

View from the Brig o' Doon of the Burns Monument.

Monday Exposure: Scott's View

Is it really Sir Walter Scott's favorite view?

Dunno.

But the story goes that Scott passed by this overlook so often that his horses knew to halt here even without his command. Together they would look down the steep hill, across the meandering River Tweed, and out to the rolling hills and farmlands.

Sir Walter Scott's favorite view: over the winding banks of the River Tweed in the Scottish borders. A loop of the river carves a nearly circular valley below.

Sir Walter's Scott's tomb amidst the ruins.

The viewpoint lies near the town of Melrose in the Scottish borders. A few miles to the east lay Scott's grandarents' farm, where Scott spent a few early childhood years convalescing after polio left him lame. In the later decades of his life Scott built a home, Abbotsford House, upstream on the banks of the Tweed, a few miles west of the view. At his death, Scott's funeral procession passed by this spot on its way to his burial in the nearby Dryburgh Abbey, one of the glorious ruined border abbeys in southeast Scotland.

The three-peaked hill in the distance, Eildon Hill, is the remnant of an eons-old volcanic eruption. It lies on the path of St. Cuthbert's Way, a popular hiking trail. A small monument to Scott stands atop the middle peak. Scott's view of the hill is lovely, though better in the morning with the sun at your back than in the afternoon when you may be gazing toward the sun.

Nowadays, to enjoy Scott's View you don't need to hike or ride a horse. It's marked and accessible on a small road, B6356, a mile from Dryburgh Abbey and a few miles from the town of Melrose.

Monday Exposure: Railway time

Railways are said to "annihilate both time and space"; this they can only do safely and satisfactorily by keeping time.
          — William Baddeley, The Mechanics' Magazine, Vol. 33, Nov. 27, 1840


Well into the 1800s, the time of day often differed in neighboring villages and towns. Partly, it was because time was a matter of guesswork. Sundials were in common use. At best, ordinary people might rely on a church bell or a town clock for guidance. Appointments and meeting times were vague and flexible. Schedules were advisory, not prescriptive. Most people had no watch or clock in their home until the 20th century. In the 19th century, clocks were rare; accurate clocks rarer still.

Moreover, there was no standard time across a region, country, or continent. Heading east to west across Britain, a traveler gained fifteen minutes or more over the course of 24 hours, and likewise lost fifteenish minutes if traveling east. Norwich time was several minutes ahead of London time. Oxford was officially 5 minutes and 2 seconds behind London's time; Leeds was 6 minutes and 20 seconds behind; Exeter was 14 minutes behind.

This led to mayhem and disaster for the emerging rail industry.

In the 1840s, clocks — and time — became standard across British train stations. This clock, from the Great Western Railway, was built around 1850 and used for more than 100 years.

Rail transport was developing at a lightning speed. Steam locomotives first appeared in 1811. The first steam trains for passengers came in 1825. By 1830, the first inter-city route opened. Mail was first sent by rail in 1838. In 1839, the first timetable was published. By the 1850s, Britain had more than 7,000 miles of track.

As more and more trains crisscrossed the country — carrying goods and, increasingly, passengers — the need for standardization became readily apparent. Neither stationmasters, nor train conductors, nor passengers were certain when a train would depart its station. Trains frequently delayed departure to allow for stragglers. Travelers often missed connections because of the vagaries of timekeeping in different towns.

Even worse, the running of trains across the network of tracks had become a nightmare of accidents and near-misses. The railway system was an integrated whole, even if it was operated by numerous privately-owned railway companies. Timetables had just been invented, but given the non-uniformity of time across the land they were more ideal targets than actual planning tools. Even if the train personnel could figure out the complexities of local times, no one could rely on trains traveling at regular and reliable intervals. Trains which should have clear track in front of them might find themselves delayed by trains which had dithered before leaving a station or, perilously, find trains heading toward them from the opposite direction.

It was a mess. A dangerous mess. And even more significantly for these new titans of industry, a costly mess.

The railway bosses demanded that time be standardized. At first, they met with resistance from many municipalities, which had no desire to reset their clocks at the fiat of nouveau riche railway owners. So the rail bosses took matters into their own hands. By 1841, the Great Western Railway ordered that all of its stations would use London time, regardless of the local time around the stations. Passengers who wished to ride the trains found themselves forced to use the railway's timekeeping instead of the local timekeeping.

Other railways followed suit. In 1845, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway petitioned Parliament to require a single uniform time for the entire rail network. The petition failed.

But the railway bosses pushed on. In 1847, the major railway operators agreed they should all adopt London time — generally called Greenwich time due to the location of the Royal Observatory — as soon as the Post Office supported the shift. Carrying of the mail was a major source of income, of course, and the Post Office was a valuable client. But more significantly, although the Post Office had no official role in setting the standardization of time for the railways, it gave the railway operators a veneer of government authority. When the Post Office granted its consent later in 1847, most British railways adopted London time on 1 December 1847.

Still, some municipalities held out. Instead of changing the time on their clocks, they decided . . . to add another minute hand. Essentially, they stuck their tongues out and said ppfffttt! One minute hand showed the local time while the other, sometimes smaller, minute hand showed the new railway standard time. Watches on sale showed local and London time. Eventually, the silliness of their behavior outweighed their protest, and the local time went away. Bristol held out until 1852. By 1855, approximately 98% of the public clocks in the U.K. were on London time, though some cities, like Bath, dragged on until 1860.

Finally, in 1880, Parliament passed its Definition of Time Act to confirm the fait accompli on the ground, a standard time across the United Kingdom.