Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time - Rilegato

Blaise, Clark

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 029784136X ISBN 13: 9780297841364

Casa editrice: W&N, 2000

Riassunto

Even by Victorian standards, the Scots/Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming was a man of extraordinary energy - designer of Canada's first postage stamp and the first street maps of Canadian cities, engineer of the trans-Canadian railway to British Columbia and of the trans-Pacific telegraph cable from London to Australia and New Zealand via Canada and Fiji, he yet found the time to write volumes of diaries, thousands of letters and fifteen books. Time Lord tells the story of yet another achievement - Fleming's greatest - his idea of unifying the world's times in a series of time zones, an idea originally rejected as too trivial for discussion by the Royal Canadian Society of Engineers for whom he wrote his first paper on the subject. Twenty years later, after a series of journeys to the British astronomer-Royal, the Czar's Astronomer, the courts of Prussia, Italy and Japan and finally the American President, and after opposition from many quarters, the world adjusted its clocks and accepted Fleming's new system. It is an extraordinary story, wonderfully illuminating of the past, and of a fascinating man, difficult, irascible, but ultimately brilliant. Comparable obviously to Longitude, Fleming's achievement, in a world without modern communications or transport, makes the achievement of a single European currency seem like a minor detail in comparison.

Su questo libro

Descrizione del libro:

The extraordinary story of Sir Sandford Fleming, the Victorian engineer, inventor, designer and writer who single-handedly persuaded the world to abandon local times and accept the system of time zones we use today.

L'autore:

Head of the prestigious Iowa Writers Program, Clark Blaise is the author of several books. He is married to the novelist Bharati Mukherjee.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: W&N
• Data di pubblicazione: 2000
• ISBN 10: 029784136X
• ISBN 13: 9780297841364
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 192