The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men Part 10

"Jest as far."

"And around noon-time?"

"It's right short."

"Then," said the crippled lad, "don't you see that if we measure where the morning shadow stops growing shorter and the afternoon shadow begins growing longer, that'll be the middle of the day?"

The darky slapped the side of his leg with a resounding smack.

"Who'd have thought o' that, now?" he said. "It sho' does look like you was right."

Ross bent down and measured the shadow.

"I think we'd better put in a peg to mark it," he said, looking up; "it doesn't seem to be changing so much. I can only make it five and five-eighths, now."

Anton stuck a sharpened peg in the ground and took out the little silver watch that had been given him on his birthday.

"It's not nearly twelve o'clock by my watch yet," he said.

"That's standard time," Ross reminded him; "don't forget that we're not right on the line of standard time here, Anton. That's New Orleans time you've got, not sun time."

"Is thar more'n one kind of time?" the darky asked. "Ain't time, jest time, all over?"

"I should say not!" declared both boys at once, "it's never the same true time at any two places in the world."

"That is," corrected Ross, "unless they happen to be due north and south."

"Yo' makin' a joke of me, Mistah Anton," declared Dan'l.

"Not a bit of it," replied Anton. "I'll show you just why. The sun rises in the east, doesn't it?"

"Sho'."

"So, if you walked a long way east, you'd see the sun quicker, wouldn't you?"

"Ah s'pose Ah would," the darky responded hesitatingly.

"And your watch would show that the sun rose earlier."

"Sho'!"

"So noon would come sooner, too. And if you walked west, it would be longer before the sun rose and noon would be later, that is, figured by your watch."

"Ah declah Ah never thought o' that!"

"So, you see, every place has a different time."

"But," the darky protested, "it's the same time when Ah goes to Vicksburg."

"Certainly," the lad answered, "and if you went away to Texas it would seem the same, but it really wouldn't be. The clocks change four times in the United States, don't they, Ross?"

"Yes, four times," the older lad agreed. "East of a line running through Buffalo, Wheeling, Asheville and Atlanta, time is called 'Eastern Time.'

Everything west of that line is really an hour later, so the clock has to be put back an hour. If a train comes from the east into the station at Wheeling, at ten o'clock in the morning, and only stays in the depot five minutes, the timetable shows that it left at five minutes past nine."

"What-all happens to that yar hour?" asked Dan'l.

"It's just lost," Ross declared. "That standard of time, which is called 'Central Time,' reaches clear across to the middle of the Dakotas, and the eastern boundaries of Colorado, and New Mexico. There you lose another hour, 'Mountain Time' extending as far as the ridge of the Rockies. From there to the Pacific coast, it's called 'Pacific Time' and is another hour later.

"You see, Dan'l," he continued, "when it's noon in Washington and New York, it's eleven o'clock in Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans; ten o'clock in b.u.t.te, Cheyenne and Denver; and nine o'clock in Spokane, San Francisco and Los Angeles."

"Who-all fixed it up that way?"

"The railways," Ross answered, "but the various states have O.K.ed it.

You've got to arrange the setting of time in some definite way for the handling of railroads and telegraphs and things of that sort. It seems funny, Dan'l, but if you send a telegram here to a friend in San Francisco, he'll get it, according to his watch, nearly two hours before you sent it."

Ross stooped down as he spoke, and again measured the shadow of the pole, as it lay stretched out like a black line across the gra.s.s.

"It's just the same!" he cried. "It's noon now!"

Anton promptly set his watch right by the sun.

"There's Mr. Levin coming," he announced, "let's show him that his watch is wrong. He's always so exact."

The boys came up to him, but before they could put their question, the Weather Man spoke.

"Well, boys," he said, "what are you after? Putting up a flag-pole? It's a little short, isn't it?"

"No, Mr. Levin," Anton answered, "that isn't a flag-pole, it's a new clock, and one that's always right!"

"How have you been making it?" the Forecaster asked, immediately interested.

Anton described the principles that the boys had used and especially the means adopted to ensure that the pole should be upright.

"Why don't you fix it so that you won't have to measure the length of the shadow every day?" queried the Forecaster. "It's quite easy when you know how."

"Won't you show us?" responded Anton.

"Certainly," the old Weather Man answered, getting out of his buggy. "I see," he continued, "you've got hold of the idea that when the sun casts the shortest shadow it must be true noon, because the sun is half-way between the longest shadow and the shortest. That means, of course, that the sun is at the meridian."

"Yes, sir."

"It would be much the same thing, wouldn't it, if you measured half the distance between the points on the horizon where the sun rose and the sun set?"

Ross thought for a moment.

"Yes," he said, "I suppose it would. But is that always the same?"

"How can it be anything else?" the Forecaster asked. "In winter the day is short and in summer it is long, but the meridian plane is always the same--that is, excepting for certain very small astronomical variations which would make no difference to you in the matter of measuring time.