|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
It's difficult to believe, but at the start of the century, time wasn't standardized. Representatives from 25 nations established Greenwich Mean Time and the world's time zones in 1884, but chaos remained: In St. Petersburg, local time was 2 hours, 1 minute, and 18.7 seconds ahead of Greenwich, England, while Paris was 9 minutes and 21 seconds ahead of Greenwich.  Standardization of time didn't occur until after 1910, and it was only then that the control of time could begin. Reducing the time expended to get from one place to another became vitally important, and personal contact was paramount. The bicycle craze of the 1890s gave way to the automobile frenzy of the 1920s and 1930s. The Wright Brothers accomplished what Leonardo da Vinci and others had only dreamed of. Guglielmo Marconi sent radio signals across the ocean in 1901, and within three decades, telephone contact between New York and London, transmitted via the airwaves, was common. It is now one world, made small by the ability to travel vast distances quickly or communicate at whim. Even the once-imponderable frontiers of space have been crossed. What is far away has always beckoned: Now we can come much closer.
|
|
|
  |
|
