Marketing Time

Levine again: “Samuel P. Langley, who was eventually to become Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was the first to cash in on the growing demand for time coordination. In 1867, Langley took over the directorship of a struggling observatory in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and quickly developed its timekeeping capabilities. He then persuaded Western Union to connect the observatory to the city. Soon after, he began literally to sell the time, in the form of observatory time signals, by telegraphic transmission to industries throughout Pittsburgh. In 1871, for example, the Pennsylvania Railroad declared Allegheny Observatory time their official standard and contracted for $1000 a year to receive Langley’s signals. Langley also went out of his way to proselytize for standardization, writing a number of articles about the advantages of having a single standard time instead of a myriad of uncoordinated local times. He referred to local time as a ‘fiction’ and a ‘relic of antiquity,’like local weights and measures or local coins, which ‘the progress of centralization, and the interchange of commerce and travel’ had rendered outmoded. Langley established time as a commodity.”