Time and tempo
NY City public radio started this series called Radio Lab. This is a summary of a fascinating discussion on time that I had to capture somewhere. What better place than here? Time was a very personal concept back in the middle of the 19th century. Cities throughout the country had their local time that was synchronized to the day, so at noon it was pretty much 12 o'clock no matter where in the country you were. Even within a locality though, there were different times. So when the railroad was introduced, the question became "whose time should we choose?" Would it be the bank's time or the grocer's whose clock ran 10mins ahead of the banker, or the bar, whose clock was 10mins slower than the bank. So, for the sake of it's own business, the Railways introduced their own clocks and prominently displayed them at each railway station. As it turned out, the businesses soon found it necessary to synch up with the railway clocks - the banks because they got cash by t...