Talk:Charles F. Dowd

Untitled
This page is somewhat contradictory. It credits Dowd with the basic concept of time zones based on one hour bands of longitude, then it says the proposal adopted by the railroads in 1883 somehow didn't rely on Dowd's concept, because it fiddled with drawing the longitude bands a bit. That's not consistent and doesn't seem fair to Dowd. Did he or did he not invent the US Standard Time zone concept, adopted by the railroads and then univerally in some form. This article needs to do a better job of answering that basic question. What, if anything did the railroads change or improve with their implementation of the concept in 1883? BTW, I live near Saratoga Springs and there's a nice sundial memorial to Dowd behind the main street bank, the Adirondack Trust Co. on Broadway   Jack Lebowitz Jackl2400 17:58, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

According to About.com, which attributes its sources as the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Department of Commerce, the inventor of time zones was Sir Sandford Fleming.

But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone#Standard_time_zones does not credit Fleming: "A single time zone for the entire world was first proposed by Sandford Fleming in 1876, through his call for a global 24-hour clock, conceptually located at the center of the Earth, and not linked to any surface meridian. In 1879 he specified that his universal day would begin at the anti-meridian of Greenwich (see e.g. "International Date Line"), while conceding that hourly time zones might have some limited local use. He continued to advocate his system at subsequent international conferences. In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference did not adopt his time zones because they were not within its purview. The conference did adopt a universal day of 24 hours beginning at Greenwich midnight, but specified that it "shall not interfere with the use of local or standard time where desirable".

Instead the article credits both Dowd and William F. Allen. Apparantly Fleming had the idea of basing time at Greenwich, but proposed the whole world would have one time zone (in 1876). Dowd ( in about 1870) proposed time zones in America based on one hour increments, but it was Allen (in 1883) who's meridians were adopted. 76.93.253.45 (talk) 04:24, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Death
I am going to add a brief note about his death. I dont think its enough for a new section.--76.31.242.174 (talk) 06:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Im not good at this stuff so I dont know how to footnote a book. I added the Howse book in the reference list but I cant get it to footnote to the sentnce I wrote about Dowd's death. If someone can do it please do so. The info is there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.31.242.174 (talk) 06:48, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

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