“Resolved, That the Conference proposes the adoption of a universal day for all purposes for which it may be found convenient, and which shall not interfere with the use of local time where desirable.”

After having disposed of that clause we can proceed to dispose of the other parts of the resolution.

The PRESIDENT.  You propose, then, to divide the resolution as printed in the circular into two resolutions, and you now offer the first part for consideration.

Mr. RUTHERFURD, Delegate of the United States.  If that is the more convenient form of putting it, it meets my views.  It will be more easy to discuss the subject, more easy to arrive at a decision, in that form.

M. le Comte ALBERT DE FORESTA, Delegate of Italy.  I propose as an amendment the fifth resolution of the Roman Conference, which reads as follows: 

“The Conference recognizes, for certain scientific needs and for the internal service of great administrations of ways of communications, such as those of railroads, lines of steamships, telegraphic and postal lines, the utility of adopting a universal time, in connection with local or national times, which will necessarily continue to be employed in civil life.”

The PRESIDENT.  The question is now upon the amendment offered by the Delegate of Italy.

Professor ABBE, Delegate of the United States.  I would like to ask whether this amendment adds anything substantially to the resolution.  I think it does not.  It simply specifies the details of the resolution pending before us.  That resolution “proposes the adoption of a universal day for all purposes for which it may be found convenient.”  That is general.  The amendment merely specifies certain of these purposes.  That is a matter of detail.

Mr. ALLEN, Delegate of the United States.  Mr. President, I desire to offer an amendment to the amendment, as follows: 

“Civil or local time is to be understood as the mean time of the approximately central meridian of a section of the earth’s surface, in which a single standard of time may be conveniently used.”

Mr. RUTHERFURD, Delegate of the United States.  Mr. President, it does not seem to me that it is within the competence of this Conference to define what is local time.  That is a thing beyond us.

Mr. W. F. ALLEN, Delegate of the United States, then said:  Mr. President and gentlemen, all efforts to arrive at uniformity in scientific or every-day usage originate in a desire to attain greater convenience in practice.  The multiplicity of coins of which the relative value can only be expressed by fractions, the various common standards of weights and of measures, are inconvenient both to the business man and the scientist.  Alike inconvenient to both are the diverse standards of time by which the cities of the world are governed, differing, as they do, by all possible fractions of hours.