Time Lord : Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time

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Summary: A good article, not a book
Review: I too came into Blaise's Tim Lord with the outstanding book Longitude on my mind. While Blaise made some very good points to set the situation up, his failure to realy follow through is disappointing. The author has taken what was at heart a very good article and stretched it out into a thin book. Unfortunately, something had to suffer. It is obvious that the author is impressed by Sanford Fleming, but his fondness is for the whole man's accomplishments, not just Standard Time. So as a result we are treated to a lot of forshadowing of Fleming's role with the trans-pacific cable, but of course since it does not relate to the Standard Time issue, it is left hanging. Some of his observations about time were very interesting, and helped set the whole story in context very well. But then he would go off ruminating about the aesthetics of time, or try to set the whole time issue in the context of Victorian changes and Sherlock Holmes, which was just fluff. It didn't say much. It read like a school child trying to puff up his report so it matches the teacher's minimum requirements. Maybe I'm being harsh because I misread Blaise's thesis, but it seemed that he spent more time on time than on society and the effects of time standardization. The conference itself, setting time zones and the prime meridian is almost anticlimactic in it's place. I came away learning about why we have 24 time zones, why the Prime Meridian is in Greenwich, and that the railroads set their own time for a good part of the 1800's. Other than that, I took very little form this book, and very little about who Sanford Fleming was, outside of someone who missed a train and did something about it. This book could have been so much more.

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Summary: Time Lord is definitely worth the time
Review: If you are looking for a straightforward and potentially superficial narrative on the history of standard time, Time Lord is unlikely to satisfy. But if you enjoy writers who challenge and delight with bold ideas and stirring insight, Time Lord by Clark Blaise will surely earn a favored spot on your bookshelf. Blaise is no ordinary writer and Time Lord is no ordinary history book. It may not be an easy read throughout, but it is definitely a compelling and rewarding one for any reader who revels in being roused to think and reflect. Rather than take the obvious and well-trodden paths of conventional biographies, Blaise has produced an enlightening treatise on time in a style that is at once literary and accessible. Yes, dates, places, people and events are offered. Sir Sandford Fleming's story is ably told. And wonderful anecdotes are related. "Notes on Time and Victorian Science" is a particularly fascinating chapter, especially in its description of what happened when the telegraph came to outlying Scottish villages in the early 1850s: "Country folk appeared with their messages tightly rolled, imagining they'd be able to jam them, literally, through the copper wires." (It gets even better!) But what Blaise does best is to transport the reader beyond the obvious, providing unexpected insights (personal and historic) on the creation of standard time and its impact on the world around us - including art, literature and, of course, the standardization of train schedules. On first read, "The Aesthetics of Time" would seem to be the most problematic chapter. Although beautifully written, it initially begs the question: does it really belong? On second reading, however, it emerges as the most daring and rewarding chapter, with the potential to forever influence the way you read a classic novel or view a great work of art. Time Lord is a remarkable tour of the Victorian Age and Clark Blaise is a skilled and illuminating guide. It is most definitely worth the journey.

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Summary: A slice of the history of World Time
Review: Time Lord is a biography of Sir Sandford Fleming, and the story of his role in the establishment of world standard time in the latter part of the 19th century. Before the advent of world standard time, there was only "local time" - the clocks in the town squares of villages and cities everywhere were calibrated to indicate noon when the sun cast the shortest shadow locally. But rail travelers were confounded with endless time adjustment and conversion charts as they deciphered the railway's timetable. Information, such as weather data, gathered across the country via electric telegraph, required tedious timing adjustments in order to reconcile related events to a common timeline. American railroad leaders responded by establishing a system of US time zones which approximate those used to this day. But Fleming saw the time problem as not just America-wide, but global. His argument for a globe-encircling time system, comprised of a "prime" meridian and twenty-four time zones, was visionary; it not only anticipated the continent-linking undersea telegraph cable, which he saw in his lifetime, but it was in place to support the successor technology introduced by Marconi and all of its familiar descendents, including cell phones, global positioning, supersonic travel, and the internet.
The story moves with fits and starts, with major forays (linkages actually) into numerous other topics including philosophy, art, music and literature. Possibly this author, the former head of an International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, was moved to use this as an opportunity to enlighten and diversify our own thought processes and knowledge. I can only say that if the reader is simply researching the technical history of standard time, then there's a lot of ancillary material to stumble through in this book. But if the reader is more interested in studying the concept of time in general, (of which the idea of standard time represents just one facet) then this author accomplishes that goal in this book and as well provides numerous springboards for the continuation of that study.