Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America by Sam Roberts

Author:Sam Roberts [ROBERTS, SAM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Landmarks & Monuments, Public Transportation, Railroads, TRANSPORTATION / RAILROADS - HISTORY, Transportation, Buildings, Architecture, History
ISBN: 9781455525959
Google: DgYvB8G9higC
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2013-01-22T16:05:46.958893+00:00

PERHAPS THE TERMINAL’S MOST ENDURING EXPORT is about time. Until 1883, virtually every town in the country set local time by the sun. Typically, noon would be regularly signaled so people could synchronize their clocks and watches. (A ball drop down a flagpole was considered most reliable, ringing a gong less so, given the slower speed of sound. In New York the daily ball drop downtown alerted mariners and delivered a telegraphic notification to the city’s more than 2,000 jewelry stores so they could adjust their time pieces.) Whatever the method, the divergent definitions wreaked havoc on timetables as the railroads spread geographically and gained speed. Suddenly, every minute and second counted. But efforts to standardize time were uneven at best and disconnects were common. In On Time, Carlene E. Stephens recounted the epochal experience of Richard Cobden, the British calico baron, who was traveling by train from Boston to Providence in 1835:

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