![]() ![]() "It's in as plain sight as it could possibly be," he said.Īs Dr. And one clue to the origin of relativity can be found in something as mundane and practical as a 19th-century train schedule. Peter Galison, 48-a Harvard professor of the history of science and of physics, a pilot, art lover and nascent filmmaker-is right, physics and Einstein have flourished more in their connections to the world than in any ivory tower aloofness. In fact, there's a historical argument that the challenges of scheduling trains inspired Albert Einstein's development of the general theory of relativity:Įinstein's relativity has long been regarded by scholars as a monument to the power of abstract thought. Chicago was and still is the biggest railroad town in the country, and the railroads were, in both the United States and Europe, the catalyst for the creation of time zones. What only glancingly made it into the article was something else I learned: America was divided into its (mostly accepted) time zones in Chicago. I learned a lot from it, including how complex and contentious they still are (Maine and Massachusetts have been considering getting out of daylight saving time and moving to the Atlantic time zone, and they have a compelling argument), and how daylight saving time emerged from one postman's entomology hobby. Yesterday I published a freelance piece on the ins and outs of time zones.
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