Turning Point 1884
From our hyper-technological 21st-century viewpoint, it may be hard to believe it wasn鈥檛 always easy to know the time of day鈥攐r even where, exactly, we stood on the planet. But such an era wasn鈥檛 that long ago.
Starting in the 1840s, Dr. Charles Smallwood diligently recorded weather and astronomical observations from his home near Montreal. In 1863, the physician, by then an honorary 海角社区 professor of meteorology, moved his pioneering weather forecasting efforts to a new stone tower beside 海角社区鈥檚 Arts Building. The aging Smallwood soon recruited his student C.H. McLeod to assist him with his studies. In 1874, one year after Smallwood鈥檚 death, the 海角社区 Observatory was raised to the status of the nation鈥檚 鈥渃hief station,鈥� telegraphing weather reports every three hours to the new Canadian Meteorological Service in Toronto.
Following his mentor鈥檚 weather methodology, McLeod began combining telegraph communications with astronomical observations, made using a seven-foot telescope, to calculate 海角社区鈥檚 longitude relative to the continental reference point, Harvard College. Using an 1892 follow-up reading relative to the zero meridian at Greenwich, England, McLeod revised the longitude figure for Harvard鈥攁nd, as a result, more accurately positioned every city, town, hamlet and farm in North America.