The Day of Two Noons, a fascinating exploration of the division of the earth into 24 different time zones, will be virtually presented from 6-7:30 pm on Thursday, April 24. The Zoom presentation is being hosted by the Global Village Museum of Arts and Cultures.
IMAGE: In the 1870s, Charles Dowd proposed to divide the United States into four time zones.
Tim Orr, the 1st Vice President of Denver’s Chapter 21 of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors, will explain how all the clocks in the United States were reset at a single time on a single day, resulting in the paradox called The Day of Two Noons.
“Before the coming of railroads and even faster transportation, local time as determined by the sun was plenty accurate for almost everyone’s needs,” said Orr. “But when we started traveling at high speeds, the ‘local time’ at the starting point could be very different from the ‘local time’ at the destination. The railroads especially had a terrible problem. How could schedules be figured out and published when local time might change 50 times from starting point to destination?”
Scientists solved the issue by dividing the earth into 24 different time zones. “But you had to convert from the old system of local time to the new one of zone time,” Orr explained. “The railroad system decided to reset all its clocks on a single day – at a single time. The telegraph, which could send a signal from coast to coast at close to the speed of light, helped. The result was simplified time everywhere, but on the day of the reset, some locations had two noons.”
The presentation is in conjunction with the Museum’s Main Gallery exhibit, It’s About TIME, which runs through May 24. The exhibition is funded in part by the City of Fort Collins’ Fort Fund.
Tickets:
Tickets to the presentation are $10 per Zoom registration, and reservations are required by 5 pm Tuesday, April 22, at globalvillagemuseum.org. Registrants will receive the Zoom link the day before the program.
The Global Village Museum is located at 200 West Mountain Avenue, and Museum hours are 11 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, please visit globalvillagemuseum.org or call 970-221-4600.