What Time Is It?
Trains crashing. People dying. The perils of incorrect time needed a solution and U-M was ready.
For thousands of years the vast majority of humanity only rarely needed to know precisely what time it was. A glance at the sky to give a sense of how long until dawn or dusk was generally enough. It was not until the 1800s that this began to change. As more and more Americans were drawn to the factories of industrializing cities, their days were increasingly governed not by the Sun, but by the chime of the clock. Along with the railroads that bound these cities together, this created a new need for widespread and accurate timekeeping.
Locomotives became an increasingly common sight for Americans in the 1850s.
Railroad Time
Beginning with the first steam locomotive’s journey through Baltimore in 1829, railroads exploded across the United States. By 1850, more than 5,000 miles of track had been built; by 1861, over 80 percent of people in the Midwest were within 5 miles of a railroad line.
American Railroad Expansion from 1850 to 1861.
The route of the Michigan Central Railroad from Detroit to Kalamazoo, 1848.
Railroads’ spread and their rapid travel speed tied American society together in a revolutionary way and made time differences between cities more stark. Before this, when it took up to a week to travel between Detroit and Kalamazoo, the 10 minutes’ difference in local time (determined by sundial) made no difference. But when a trip by train took only a few hours, the time difference was much more noticeable.
Illinois Central Railroad Timetable, 1855, stating trains will run on Amboy, Illinois time and reminding conductors to check their watches against it.
To account for this, and to simplify the process of calculating a train’s location, railroads noted the local time at one station, then set the clocks at each station and the conductors’ watches to that same time. Known as “railroad time,” this system meant that no matter where a train was physically, its time was standardized along the whole line. It also allowed for the creation of timetables that would be accurate for every train at every station.
However, depending on a station’s location, these could be quite different from local time. For example, the Michigan Central Railroad used Detroit time for all its timetables since that is where it was headquartered, but this was 18 minutes ahead of the local time of its station in Chicago. Needless to say, this often led to the unwary passenger missing their train!
Confusion and Destruction
The issue of time difference was made even worse when a town had multiple railroads. At times, fun was made of these difficulties, as the Detroit Free Press did when it shared a story from Vermontville in western Michigan, where two railroads on different time schedules met.
A young man in Sunfield was engaged to marry a Vermontville girl, the time was set and the knot was to be tied last Saturday evening at 7 o’clock. The bride was in waiting, Detroit time, but the groom was running on Chicago time and got left. The bride, after waiting six minutes, got up on her ear and married a man from Vermontville, who happened to be there on Detroit time.
The Flint and Pere Marquette Railway was one of four railroad companies in Saginaw—each running on a different time.
Elsewhere in Michigan, clocks were even more confusing. In 1864, the four railroads that passed through Saginaw ran on three different time schedules: Chicago time, Detroit time, and Hamilton, New York, time. All of these differed dramatically from local time and one can only imagine travelers’ confusion as they tried to transfer trains!
Similarly, one Detroit newspaper laid out the frustrations of time in the city, where not only the railroads, but every clocktower and church, ran on their own schedules:
When persons speak of “Detroit time,” they speak of a very curious and indefinite thing…It is here and there and everywhere, and it is rather doubtful it is anywhere. Every man regulates his chronometer according to his own taste and carries the true time according to himself. The bells in the various towers strike at various intervals, as it may happen, often varying from ten to thirty minutes of each other. Amid all this jargon the anxious inquirer after the true time is liable to become hopelessly confused.
The bells of the Central United Methodist Church in Detroit contributed to the time chaos in the city.
As frustrating as these competing time systems were for Americans as they walked the streets of their cities or attempted to change trains, they were also potentially dangerous for those traveling the rails. As ever more railroads sped across the nation, more and more accidents occurred. Between January and August 1853 alone, railroad collisions left over 190 dead and nearly 400 injured.
Many of these accidents were caused by trains traveling too fast or by various mechanical failures. But many others were caused by inaccurate or faulty clocks, or by differences in the time used by different railroads on the same track. One of the most infamous crashes involved two trains belonging to the Providence and Worcester Railroad in Massachusetts in August 1853. On a single line track that day the southbound train was running behind schedule. Its conductor ordered the engineer to increase speed, believing based on his watch that they had time to reach a siding before the northbound train reached them.
He was wrong.
The Providence and Worcester head-on collision, August 12, 1853.
Fourteen people died when the two trains collided, and dozens more were injured. The railroad attempted to place the blame on the conductor for allowing his train to fall behind schedule. But critics accused the railroad company of supplying him with a poorly functioning watch and of failing to ensure the watches on the two trains matched.
The New York Times’ condemnation of the Providence and Worcester Railroad crash, August 13, 1853.
The disaster added fuel to public outrage over railroad accidents, with the New York Times loudly condemning the “wholesale slaughter by railroad trains.” At the same time, the nation’s businessmen fretted not only over the loss of life, but also about the destruction of the goods that trains transported.
One of those frustrated by inaccuracies in timekeeping on both a personal and professional level was Henry Nelson Walker of Detroit. A lawyer by training, Walker had served as Michigan’s Attorney General before becoming involved with Michigan’s rapidly expanding banking and railroad industries. Eventually, he became Vice President of the Detroit Savings Bank and President of the Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee Railroad Company. He was also the President of the Detroit Young Men’s Society, perhaps the most powerful cultural force in the state, which hosted public lectures and debates on scientific, political, and historical topics. Thus, for many reasons, Walker was interested in the problem of time.
A Vision of the Stars
Two Henrys with a Vision: Henry Philip Tappan (Left), first President of the University of Michigan, and Henry Nelson Walker (Right) of Detroit.
Walker’s solution presented itself in the form of the University of Michigan’s first president, Henry Philip Tappan.
The University of Michigan campus in 1854, shortly after Henry Tappan’s arrival. The modern Diag is on the bottom left and the under-construction Detroit Observatory is in the upper right corner past Fletcher Farm.
Long a critic of the state of America’s colleges, Tappan complained in his 1851 book, University Education, that “in our country we have no universities…They have neither libraries and material of learning, generally, nor the large and free organization which go to make up universities.”
When he arrived in Ann Arbor in 1852, Tappan gave a speech outlining his vision for a new type of university. Drawing on the German model of education, he sought to transform the University of Michigan into an institution where knowledge was not just taught, but created.
In his inaugural address Tappan argued that learning must be valuable to society as a whole, for “literature, science, arts, educational apparatus, and labor all increase the commodities of trade, and add to the national wealth.” He proposed creating a scientific curriculum incorporating mathematics, civil engineering, chemistry, the industrial arts, and “astronomy with the use of an observatory.”
One of those listening to Tappan that day was Henry Walker. Identifying with Tappan’s vision, Walker approached the President after his speech and asked how he could support his efforts. Tappan replied that he could help by funding the construction of an observatory.
The Celestial Coordinate System Much like latitude and longitude on Earth, astronomers use right ascension and declination to locate objects’ east-west and north-south location respectively. Right ascension is measured in hours, minutes, and seconds and declination is measured in degrees .
Walker swiftly arranged a meeting for Tappan with other prominent Detroiters who agreed to donate funds for an observatory. That observatory wouldn’t just put U-M on the map as a great American university in keeping with Tappan’s vision, it would also solve the problem of time.
That solution arose from astronomers’ long history of using time to measure the position of objects in the night sky. To do this, astronomers use a system similar to longitude and latitude transposed onto the heavens, but with one key difference. That difference is that astronomers measure celestial longitude not in degrees but in hours, minutes, and seconds using “sidereal time.”
While time on Earth is based on solar time—with one day measured as the interval between two sequential passages of the Sun overhead—sidereal time is slightly different. Instead of the Sun it uses the interval between successive passages of a given star, such as Sirius, across an imaginary line stretching directly over an observer’s head from north to south. This line is known as the meridian. The timing of the passage of an object across a meridian provides its celestial longitude, known as right ascension. Thus to accurately locate and track an object in space absolute precision in timekeeping is required.
Jasper F. Cropsey, “The Detroit Observatory,” 1855.
At the same time, if a particular object’s right ascension was already known to an astronomer based on the work of other observatories, they could easily calculate sidereal time since it is universal across the globe. And that could then easily be converted to local solar time.
Tappan had only “contemplated to secure a large refracting telescope and erect a suitable building.” That telescope would eventually be the magnificent Fitz Refractor. But Walker suggested adding a second telescope to the project: a meridian circle.
An early example of a meridian circle telescope: The Groombridge Transit Circle, constructed in 1806.
Developed in the late 1700s, meridian circles were the main means by which astronomers calculated astronomical time. This type of telescope is designed to point only north-south (along the meridian) and cannot swivel to point east or west. When a celestial object such as a star, planet, or asteroid appears in the field of view, the meridian circle is used to make two key measurements: the time at which it crosses the meridian as it travels from east to west, which provides its right ascension; and the angle of its altitude above the horizon, which provides its celestial latitude (referred to as declination).
Two views of the Walker Meridian Circle at the Detroit Observatory. The sidereal clock is visible underneath the telescope in the second image.
Franz Brünnow, the First Director of the Detroit Observatory, who oversaw the construction and installation of the Walker Meridian Circle.
Walker personally donated $4,000 ($130,000 in 2020 dollars) for the meridian circle, while other donors provided funds for the rest of the observatory. With these donations, Tappan traveled to Germany, where he commissioned the creation of one of the finest meridian circles in the world from the firm of Pistor & Martins in Berlin. With a magnifying power of up to 288 times the human eye, it could see nearly anything in the night sky, while illuminated spider threads set into the lens allowed for the precise timing of the passing of stars across its face. To calculate celestial latitude, the two rings on either side of the telescope (the wagon wheel-like objects in the images above) were covered with angle markings so small and precise they had to be read with a microscope.
The Detroit Observatory’s Sidereal Clock, used for recording sidereal time and from which local time could be calculated.
Located on a pillar next to the meridian circle was an instrument that the Detroit Directory’s First Director, Franz Brünnow, insisted be commissioned alongside it: a sidereal clock crafted by Christian Friedrich Tiede of Berlin. Placed next to the observer, the clock allowed for the precise timing of the passage of a celestial object across the telescope to be recorded. Together with the declination taken from the rings, the astronomer could calculate its celestial coordinates as seen from the observatory.
The face of the Detroit Observatory’s Sidereal Clock, with separate hands and faces for registering hours, minutes, and seconds.
These coordinates could then be compared with those prepared at other observatories and used to set the sidereal clock of the observatory to match theirs. From these, the local solar time—used for everyday timekeeping by the public—could be calculated and the other clocks of the observatory set with extreme accuracy.
In gratitude to its sponsor, Tappan named the telescope the Walker Meridian Circle. And in gratitude to the rest of the donors Walker had helped organize, the observatory was named the Detroit Observatory.
Time for Progress
James Craig Watson, Second Director of the Detroit Observatory.
The Detroit Observatory was completed in 1857, but it was not until 1863 that it began providing relief to time-addled Michiganders. On September 11 of that year, the Observatory’s second Director, James Craig Watson, grandly announced in Detroit’s newspapers that he had reached an agreement with the jeweler Martin Smith of M.S. Smith & Co. to send “by telegraph at five minutes past five o’clock P.M. precisely, the correct time for your city, derived from transits of stars observed at this Observatory.”
An engraving of the time ball on the roof of the M.S. Smith & Co. building in Detroit, 1860s.
From then on, every morning an employee of Smith’s would haul a four-foot diameter red canvas ball up a pole on the business’ roof connected by telegraph to the Observatory. When the highly precise clocks at the Observatory showed 5 o’clock in Detroit, Watson would strike a telegraph key, causing the ball to fall. The sight of a large red ball, dropping from 150-feet above the ground, must have been visible to most of the city.
Not to be outdone, the jewelers Roehm & Wright swiftly erected their own time ball also controlled by the Detroit Observatory at their store next to Detroit’s opera house. Soon other public clocks, such as the Central United Methodist Church (which still stands on Adams Avenue), also began using the new “city time” supplied from the Observatory. For the first time, clocks in Detroit became standardized.
For an example of a time ball in action, click on this link to see a video of the time ball at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.
The Michigan Central Railroad, 1880s (in red).
In the wake of this new service, the Michigan Central Railroad decided to adopt the Observatory’s Detroit time across its entire operation, which stretched outward from Detroit to Chicago, Toledo, Mackinaw City, and across Ontario to Buffalo, New York. Time was sent along more than 1,000 miles of track from Detroit and displayed at local train stations.
As this more precise time traveled with the trains, many towns along its tracks decided to end confusion caused by using local time set by their local noon. Instead they adopted “railroad time” based on the clocks in their railroad stations as their local time. Thus, a uniformity in time began to emerge across the Midwest.
Michigan Central Railroad Stations in (from left to right) Battle Creek, Detroit, and Bay City in the 1880s. Note how prominent the clock tower is on each.
From Railroad Time to Standard Time
Other railroads across the country also turned to observatories to provide time along their routes. Then in April 1883 a group of America’s leading railroad engineers adopted a plan proposed by an alumnus of the Detroit Observatory, Cleveland Abbe, to create five standardized time zones—each an hour ahead or behind those bordering it. The borders of these time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between the new Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston.
The day set for the changeover was noon on Sunday, November 18, 1883—the “day of the two noons.” When the railroads’ clocks changed over that day, Standard Railway Time inaugurated the first uniform time system spanning the entire country.
The five time zones of Railroad Standard Time in 1883. The divisions between them were not state borders, but the central railroad stations of cities.
University of Michigan Football Team, 1883.
One group that was caught unprepared for the switch to standard time that day was Michigan’s football team, which was on its way east to play Yale. As a result of the time changeover, their brief layover in Niagara Falls unexpectedly lasted eight hours. To pass the time, the team arranged a foot race between the local sprinting champion and one of the team’s backups, Fred Bonine. The world-record holding Wolverine easily won the race and his teammates “carried away all the money in sight and secured a substantial increase in spending money” for their trip.
During the 1880s, the University of Michigan adopted Standard Time while Ann Arbor retained local time.
Standard Time remained an unofficial system however. In Michigan, although Watson’s successor as Director of the Detroit Observatory Mark Harrington urged the adoption of Central Standard Time, only some towns, such as Jackson, did so. Detroit continued to use local time, as did Ann Arbor—even though the University itself adopted standard time. As a result, for several years the town ran 25 minutes faster than campus!
Map of Michigan Time since 1973. Counties in red are on Central Time while counties in yellow are on Eastern Time.
The Detroit Observatory continued transmitting time signals for almost four decades, only halting its time service in the early 1900s. Throughout this period, Americans continued to operate under a variety of times. Not until 1918 did Congress pass a law creating four official national time zones with Michigan located in the Central Time Zone.
In 1933, the time changed again when the Michigan Legislature petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to switch to Eastern Time; this was granted, except for the Upper Peninsula which remained on Central Time. Not until 1967 was the entire state finally unified under a single time zone. In 1973, however, the Upper Peninsula’s four westernmost counties petitioned Congress to return to Central Time and their request was granted.
Henry Tappan did not get to see his observatory’s contributions to standardizing time however. In June 1863, he was dismissed by the Board of Regents following a decade of clashes and controversy over a variety of issues, including his “Eastern Airs,” his support for the “foreign” German system, the controversy over establishing a college of homeopathic medicine, and the costs of the Observatory. Nevertheless, he had transformed the University of Michigan into a place where knowledge was created, not just learned, and where public service was a core element of its mission.
A view of the University of Michigan from the Detroit Observatory. Jasper Cropsey, “The University of Michigan,” 1855.