Google tributes to Sandford Fleming Canadian inventor and engineer - The Pioneer of IST OR WST

Sir Sandford Fleming is known as the inventor of worldwide standard time, but what inspired his rather brilliant idea?

Google has honoured Sandford Fleming, a Canadian inventor and engineer of Scottish birth known for his invention of worldwide standard time, with a doodle.

A Canadian engineer of Scottish birth, Fleming was a prolific designer who was knighted for his accomplishments by Queen Victoria in 1897.

He was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, in 1827, a period when regions used solar time to set their own clocks.

Fast-forward to Ireland in 1876, when a mistake printed in a timetable caused Fleming to miss his train, an incident which apparently inspired his proposal for the introduction of standardised time.

He presented the idea of a worldwide standard time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute (RCI)on February, 8, 1879.

Sir Sandford Fleming, (January 7, 1827 – July 22, 1915) was a Scottish Canadian engineer and inventor. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to colonial Canada at the age of 18. He proposed worldwide standard time zones, designed Canada's first postage stamp, left a huge body of surveying and map making, engineered much of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada and founder of the Canadian Institute, a science organization in Toronto.

After missing a train in 1876 in Ireland because its printed schedule listed p.m. instead of a.m., he proposed a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the centre of the Earth, not linked to any surface meridian. At a meeting of the Canadian Institute in Toronto on February 8, 1879, he linked it to the anti-meridian of Greenwich (now 180°). He suggested that standard time zones could be used locally, but they were subordinate to his single world time, which he called Cosmic Time. He continued to promote his system at major international conferences including the International Meridian Conference of 1884. That conference accepted a different version of Universal Time but refused to accept his zones, stating that they were a local issue outside its purview. Nevertheless, by 1929, all major countries in the world had accepted time zones.