Flat Matthew learns about the meridian and time

Today Flat Matthew visited Reedsburg, a city of about 10,000 people twelve miles away. It was founded in the 1840s, about the time that Tom's family moved to the farm where we live. There is a log cabin pioneer village and museum on the edge of town, but none of the buildings were open today. So Flat Matthew had to look at the cabins from outside. It was a sunny day, so he wore his new sunglasses.

One interesting thing about Reedsburg is that it is located directly on the 90th meridian, which means that clocks here are exactly in sync with the sun overhead. When the sun is highest in the sky, it is exactly noon Central Standard Time.

For most of human history people measured time based on the position of the sun; it was noon when the sun was highest in the sky. Farmers and other people who work outdoors can still tell time by looking at the location of the sun during the day. Until the 1800s, cities would set their town clock by measuring the position of the sun, but every city would be on a slightly different time. There was no such thing as what we call Standard Time today, where all the towns in a particular part of the country have exactly the same time. (Wisconsin and Illinois are both in Central Standard Time, and during part of the year Central Daylight Time.)

You know about time zones if you watch television, because shows that are on the air in Boston (Eastern Time) at 8:00 p.m. are on in Illinois (Central Time) at 7:00 p.m. Or if you call your grandmother long distance in California, it is a different time there than it is where you are in Illinois.

Flat Matthew didn’t understand, so we went on the internet to find out more. Flat Matthew discovered that Britain was the first country to set the time throughout a region to one standard time, and it was all because of our friends, the railroads. The railways cared about the differences in local time because their schedules had to be the same everywhere to within a minute. It took forty years for all the clocks in Great Britain to be set to the same Standard Time, though.

Standard time in time zones began in the U.S. and Canada in 1883, also because of the railroads. Prior to that, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by a well-known clock (on a church steeple, for example, or in a jeweler's window). But the railroads needed to be more accurate and uniform.

Some people did not like the change. I can still remember my grandfather in Texas refused to change his watch for Daylight Savings Time. He insisted he would go by "God's time", by which he meant sun time. And I remember touring an old house in Virginia where the big fancy clock in the hall did not have a minute hand. When it was built, people only cared about the hour of the day. The tour guide told us, "If you arrived within an hour, you were on time."

We explained to Flat Matthew that in Reedsburg, when the sun was overhead and it was noon, it was also exactly noon Central Standard Time. In other places in the Central Time Zone, the sun might be overhead several minutes before or after when the clocks said it was noon.

Flat Matthew still was not sure he understood, but we took a picture of him anyway at the marker on Main Street in Reedsburg that reads "325 FEET EAST OF THIS POINT LIES THE 90TH MERIDIAN." The marker was dedicated on October 14, 1963, to designate Reedsburg's unique position in the state.

Flat Matthew thought it would be easier for him to understand if we got him a watch. We told him he is too young to have to worry that much about time anyway.

Another interesting things about Reedsburg is that Agnes Morehead, the actress who played Endora on the old Bewitched television show, lived there.

Michael