would
answer the purpose. This had already been adopted by several leading
maritime nations, including ourselves as well as Great Britain.
It was merely a question of getting the others to fall into line.
No conference was really necessary for this purpose, because the
dissentients caused much more inconvenience to themselves than to any
one else by their divergent practice. The French held out against the
adoption of the Greenwich meridian, and proposed one passing through
Behring Strait. I was not a member of the conference, but was invited
to submit my views, which I did orally. I ventured to point out to
the Frenchmen that the meridian of Greenwich also belonged to France,
passing near Havre and intersecting their country from north to south.
It was therefore as much a French as an English meridian, and could
be adopted without any sacrifice of national position. But they
were not convinced, and will probably hold out until England adopts
the metric system, on which occasion it is said that they will be
prepared to adopt the Greenwich meridian.

One proceeding of the conference illustrates a general characteristic
of reformers. Almost without debate, certainly without adequate
consideration, the conference adopted a recommendation that
astronomers and navigators should change their system of reckoning
time. Both these classes have, from time immemorial, begun the day
at noon, because this system was most natural and convenient, when
the question was not that of a measure of time for daily life, but
simply to indicate with mathematical precision the moment of an event.
Navigators had begun the day at noon, because the observations of the
sun, on which the latitude of a ship depends, are necessarily made at
noon, and the run of the ship is worked up immediately afterward.
The proposed change would have produced unending confusion in
astronomical nomenclature, owing to the difficulty of knowing in all
cases which system of time was used in any given treatise or record
of observations. I therefore felt compelled, in the general interest
of science and public convenience, to oppose the project with all my
power, suggesting that, if the new system must be put into operation,
we should wait until the beginning of a new century.

"I hope you will succeed in having its adoption postponed until
1900," wrote Airy to me, "and when 1900 comes, I hope you will
further succeed in having it again postponed until the year