Google celebrated Sir Sandford Fleming’s 190th birth anniversary on Saturday dedicating the Google doodle art to the inventor if the standard time zones. Fleming was a Scottish-born Canadian inventor and engineer and was the first known person to propose the standard time in 1879. In 1884, Fleming’s idea had been adapted by 25 countries. Before Fleming had come around with the idea for a standardised time zone, different regions had been mainly dependent on the solar time. It is widely said that Fleming came up with the idea after he had missed a train in Ireland due to conflicting time zones affecting the scheduling of the trains. Fleming had first presented the idea of a standard time on February 8, 1879, at the Royal Canadian Institute.
The introduction of four time zones began on November 18, 1883. The exact time was majorly decided y another new technology that had taken the industrial revolution by storm-the telegraph. In 1884, following Fleming’s proposal, the ITC established a plan for the different time zones, including the International Date Line. And thus began two of the biggest inventions of the Industrial revolution- wristwatches and standard time. With the new idea, that would eventually set the world into a definitive motion, Fleming spoke about diving the time into 24 time zones starting at the Greenwich Meridian, spaced at 15 degree intervals. The proposal was formally adopted at the International Prime Meridian Conference, 1884 where 25 countries agreed to it. Before Fleming, solar time was widely used until the times, the railways became a normal feature in the world raising the need for a standardised time, The introduction of synchronised clocks was also known to help in weather forecasting. After Fleming’s proposal in 1884 at the IPMC, the Greenwich Mean Time was introduced cord Britain in 1847.
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Fleming was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland and became an apprentice surveyor at the age of 14, following which he travelled to Canada in 1845 with his brother at the age of 18. It was there that he founded the RCI in 1849, which later became a renowned centre completely dedicated to the advancement of science. Fleming, following his stint in Canada where he invented the Standardised Time Zones, was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1897. He died at the age of 88 at his daughter’s home in Halifax on July 22, 1915.
