Time Lord (27 page)

President Arthur’s letter manages to indicate that the conclusions of preparatory conferences, such as Rome and Venice, were to be considered. The link (the “embarrassment”) between the speed of railway and telegraph communications and the confusions of national primes is noted. And if the president’s letter was not specific enough, the group was soon to be addressed by the secretary of state, Frederick Frelinghuysen, who set the agenda succinctly:

The phrases “definite result” and “make those labors available” are loaded indeed, and would come to play a definitive role in the next three weeks. Results, not further deliberations, were expected. The obscurities of science were to be made “available”—that is, legally binding. The Washington conference was to be a diplomatic, not a scientific, show.

Secretary Frelinghuysen’s opening remarks commending the findings of “other scientific associations and special congresses” practically enthroned Greenwich before a vote could even be taken. Those congresses, especially the 1883 meeting in Rome, had already settled on Greenwich as the most logical and least disruptive choice, while regarding Fleming’s anti-prime as a not unreasonable alternative. American railroads, whose new standardization ran on Greenwich-based time zones, had already threatened a strike if anything but Greenwich were chosen. But officially—that is, diplomatically—Greenwich was just another national prime, equal but not superior to ten others.

If Greenwich prevailed, ten proud astronomical traditions, along with their charts and maps, would have to be scrapped. Nine of the countries might go gently, but there was one that could be counted on to resist any assault on the dignity of its
ligne sacrée
, the Paris meridian.

LACKING AFFILIATION
with a member country, Fleming had been accredited to the British delegation. His fellow British
delegates included Professor Adams of Cambridge, the 1845 “plotter-by-planetary-perturbation” of Neptune; General Strachey of the Indian Army and the Council of India, who had hosted the 1869 eclipse party to South India; and Captain Sir Frederick Evans, the head of Britain’s Naval Observatory. Cleveland Abbe and the secretary of the American Railroad Association, William F. Allen, were among the five American delegates. The others were Admiral Christopher Rodgers from the Naval Observatory, Commander Sampson of the navy, and the astrophysicist and spectroscopist Lewis Rutherfurd, another veteran of the Indian eclipse. Rear Admiral William T. Sampson and Rutherfurd, in particular, were formidably articulate, aggressive, and well-prepared.

The impressively white-bearded Admiral Rodgers was nearing retirement age, but Commander Sampson’s glory days were still before him. He would enter American military history as the victor of the Battle of San Juan Harbor during the Spanish-American War, the man most responsible for the acquisition of Puerto Rico for the United States. He would even model men’s suits in mail-order catalogues, an early instance of military-industrial cooperation. The two French delegates were the ambassador, Monsieur Lefaivre, and Jules-César Janssen, the world’s leading spectroscopist and the founder-director of the Meudon Observatory in Paris. Many of the scientists were old friends, well known to each other from eclipse parties and various professional congresses. Never, however, had they been asked to represent the interests of their countries.

Janssen is an especially attractive figure, although the role he was asked to play in Washington would cast him, in the popular press, as a pig-headed obstructionist. Originally a musician from a struggling family, and with no more formal education than Fleming, he had trained himself in ophthalmology, writing a thesis on the effect of the sun’s rays upon the cornea. Rather than set himself up as an eye doctor, however, he had turned his attention
to the rays themselves, devising the most sophisticated ways of capturing and analyzing light from the sun and other stars. His 1869 photos were classics in their day and are cited and studied even to this day.

Based on votes at the earlier geodesic gatherings in Rome and Venice, and at the Montreal convention of the American Civil Engineers, Fleming had reason to believe that his efforts of the past seven years in research, writing, and lobbying might possibly result in the acceptance of his modified time proposals. Alone among the “Anglo-Saxon” delegates, he was sensitive to French objections. He understood that an overtly British-American solution to the prime-meridian dilemma would merely antagonize the French and result in the loss of the desired consensus. French intellectual prestige among other “Latin” countries might well drag many South American and some European countries with her. With such complications in mind, Fleming had nurtured Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Belgian support. The delegate from Spain, Juan Pastorín, the head of his country’s observatory, was also the Spanish translator of Fleming’s papers.

But at his most realistic, Fleming must have recognized that the tides of history were shifting against him. He had been stronger in Montreal, at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ first foreign convention in 1881, than with the geographers in Venice a year later, and more in command at Venice than in Rome, two years after that. His standing was higher among engineers than among astronomers, and higher with astronomers than with the unknown world of naval officers and foreign diplomats. And now that “convenience” was being cited as an important, perhaps even a decisive, consideration over, say, fairness, or international harmony, the appeal of Greenwich might well be insurmountable.

By the end of 1883, North American railroads had standardized their time to Greenwich, but not to the convenient standards
of what we’d recognize today as time-zones. Europe was linked by rail from Iberia to Istanbul, yet it still had no coherent time standard across its expanse. Britain, France, Sweden, and Switzerland all recognized single national times, determined by their national observatories, yet their times were not coordinated with one another. Germany, which observed five official times, had already indicated, through the last public statement of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke (head of the chiefs of staff of the Prussian army), its endorsement for a single Berlin time, if for no other reason than military preparedness. The governments of Italy and Spain—countries whose maritime fleets adhered to Rome and Cádiz prime meridians—were in significant agreement with Fleming’s proposals for world standard time and a Pacific prime. Otto Struve already plotted some Russian survey maps from Greenwich charts, and was an enthusiastic supporter of Fleming’s modified Greenwich scheme. In other words, parts of the world had drawn closer, but the remaining differences in some ways had hardened.

If Greenwich, or any variation of Greenwich, were adopted, Paris, Berlin, Bern, Uppsala, St. Petersburg, Rome, and Cádiz, among others, would lose their prime meridians, their astronomical charts, and their proud histories. The national astronomers from “lesser” traditions were, in effect, being invited to prepare their professional suicide.

THE CONFERENCE
opened at noon with Frelinghuysen’s welcoming speech and a brief formal gathering with President Arthur. An hour later the thirty-five delegates settled around the large oval table in the Diplomatic Hall and unanimously elected Admiral Rodgers president of the congress. Rodgers opened by assuring the gathering that the United States, despite occupying one hundred degrees of longitude, not counting the Aleutian Islands (which spanned the European equivalent of London to mid-Siberia), and twelve thousand miles of coastline, had no intention
of urging an American meridian upon the convention. The United States had experimented with a Washington meridian in its first half-century, but had voluntarily surrendered it in favor of Greenwich in 1849. He alluded only indirectly to the contentious issue of choosing a prime meridian, focusing instead on the problem of prime proliferation:

The French diplomat Monsieur Lefaivre responded immediately, if somewhat obliquely. He suggested that all motions and addresses be translated into French. The French demand was predictable, but it, too, was a kind of code. The admiral had strayed just a little too close to the third rail of nineteenth-century international politics, the French-English rivalry, otherwise known as “the susceptibility.” The dread words “common prime,” coming in the English language from a naval officer in an English-speaking country were not, to the French sensibility, scientifically “neutral.” They were code words for Greenwich, a dagger in the heart of Paris.

The first session ended with notification by the other American naval officer, Commander Sampson, that the next day’s session would raise two peripheral matters: first, the desirability of opening all meetings to the public; and, second, that of inviting commentary from eminent specialists who happened to be passing through Washington, or in residence. Monsieur Lefaivre served notice that he would oppose both proposals. Admiral
Rodgers pledged State Department support in finding bilingual secretaries to prepare French and English transcripts of each day’s proceedings. In this, the State Department’s efforts were to fail. It was the British delegate representing the Dominion of Canada, Mr. Fleming, who would discover bilingual secretaries in Victorian Washington. The delegates broke for tea, cigars, dinner, and drinks, and a visit to the telegraph office to gather instructions for the next day’s session. Mr. Fleming repaired to his rooms at the Biggs Hotel and on Sunday joined his friend Cleveland Abbe for services at a Negro church.

True to Commander Sampson’s promise, the second session opened on the two motions for open seating and distinguished visitors, and both were defeated. Monsieur Lefaivre pointed out that although the conference was partially scientific, for which visiting experts and public attendance were entirely appropriate, the conference was also diplomatic. To admit the public to deliberations that were by their very nature privileged would expose the conference to popular pressure by uninformed partisans. The same could be said of the participation of unaccredited experts—all of whom just happened to be major American and British scientists—whatever their eminence. French logic carried the vote. Even Great Britain and the United States voted with the French in rejecting it.

All was going well indeed for France until Professor Rutherfurd moved: “
Resolved:
That the Conference proposes to the Governments represented the adoption as a standard meridian that of Greenwich, passing through the center of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich.” Here it was, the perfidious resolution that France had hoped to delay, perhaps even bury, brought up as the first serious resolution of the conference.

The sweet logic of diplomacy, as practiced by Monsieur Lefaivre, was about to enter a virtuoso phase. First, he stated, the motion was out of order. Since the conference did not constitute
a deliberative congress, they were merely gathering information for some future congress with executive powers. He denied that the scientific findings of Rome had any application to the diplomacy of Washington. To this, Admiral Rodgers ruled that the motion was indeed in order, and was in fact the best way to stimulate discussion on the very issue they’d been brought to Washington to resolve. Lefaivre then appealed to the self-regard of the delegates: “This Conference is composed of various elements, among which are scientists of the highest standing, but also functionaries of high rank, who are not familiar with scientific subjects, and who are charged with an examination of this question from a political stand-point. It is, moreover, our privilege to be philosophers and cosmopolitans, and to contemplate the interests of mankind not only for the present, but for the most distant future.”

At that point, Lefaivre turned to his scientific colleague, Jules-César Janssen, director of the National Observatory, to pursue the objection. And so, a strange spectacle unfolded. Two of the leading scientists from the same field, spectroscopy, friends and colleagues who’d been at the 1869 South India eclipse together, found themselves cast as opponents, not collaborators, representing their countries, not a common cause. Janssen steered the discussion back to first principles. “We have inverted the process,” he began, “nominating a meridian before discussing the nature of a prime, or indeed, if a prime for all nations is necessary. Since we are not empowered to select a prime, but only to report on the deliberations leading to recommendations, the Rutherfurd motion is out of order.”

Commander Sampson rose to the challenge and amended the resolution:
“Resolved:
it is desirable to adopt a single prime for all nations.” And so, the old issue of a prime was resurrected. A single prime for all nations was indeed desirable. General Strachey quoted Frelinghuysen’s welcoming speech. Rutherfurd quoted
President Arthur; it was foregone for both that a single prime was desirable, and that it was a waste of time to discuss it. Janssen got his answer in the form of a unanimous support for a prime.

Janssen rose to the occasion, in his country’s finest tradition of imperturbable logic. With the Greenwich motion now on the table, he sought to end the conference with a preemptive strike. We have done our job, the principle of a prime has been upheld. We are not empowered by our governments to execute any other decision. There would have to be a second (and a third, and a fourth) conference to debate the actual meridian.