Everything about Sandford Fleming totally explained
Sir Sandford Fleming (
January 7,
1827 –
July 22,
1915) was a prolific Scottish-born
Canadian engineer and
inventor, known for introducing
Universal Standard Time and Canada's
postage stamp, a huge body of
surveying and
map making, engineering much of the
Intercolonial Railway and the
Canadian Pacific Railway, and a founding member of the
Royal Society of Canada and founder of the
Royal Canadian Institute, a science organization in
Toronto.
Early life
Fleming was born in
Kirkcaldy, Fife,
Scotland, and in 1845, at the age of 17, he emigrated with his older brother David to
Ontario (then the western half of the British province of
United Canada). Their route took them through much of the Canadian colonies,
Quebec City,
Montreal,
Kingston, Ontario, before settling in
Peterborough, Ontario with their cousins until 1847.
In 1849 he established the
Royal Canadian Institute, which was formally incorporated on
November 4,
1851. In 1851 he designed the
Threepenny Beaver, the first Canadian postage stamp. Throughout this time he was fully employed as a
surveyor, mostly for the
Grand Trunk Railway. His work for them eventually gained him the position as
Chief Engineer of the
Northern Railway of Canada in 1855, where he tirelessly advocated the construction of
iron bridges instead of wood for safety reasons.
Railway surveyor
In 1858 he first proposed a coast to coast railway line spanning all of
British North America. The timing wasn't quite right, but a few years later he was appointed as the sole engineer to supervise the survey of the proposed Intercolonial Railway, linking the
Maritime provinces with
Quebec. He moved for a time to
Halifax,
Nova Scotia during construction, where he built a house on the seaward end of town. In 1872 the newly formed Canadian government decided to build the rail link to the
Pacific Ocean, and naturally the job of surveying the route fell to Fleming. That same year he organized an expedition to the Pacific that included surveyors as well as the naturalist
John Macoun, and his
Church of Scotland clergyman from
the St. Matthew's Presbyterian "kirk" from Halifax,
George Monro Grant. Over the next few years he supervised both the
Intercolonial and the
Canadian Pacific Railway, a job he completed in 1876 before turning over the chief engineer position to his long term collaborator,
Collingwood Schreiber. Fleming was present when
Donald Smith drove in the
"Last Spike" in
Craigellachie, British Columbia in 1885, now as a board member of the Canadian Pacific company. He published
The Intercolonial: A Historical Sketch (1876).
Inventor of standard time
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 and
not linked to any surface meridian. At a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute 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. 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 of the major countries of the world had accepted time zones.
Later life
In 1880 he retired from the world of surveying, and took the position of Chancellor of
Queen's University in
Kingston Ontario, a position he held for his last 35 years, where his former Minister
George Monro Grant was principal from 1877 until Grant's death in 1902. Not content to leave well enough alone, he tirelessly advocated the construction of a
submarine telegraph cable connecting all of the
British Empire, the
All Red Line, which was completed in 1902. He was a
freemason. In his later years he retired to his house in Halifax, later deeding the house and the 95 acres (38 hectares) to the city, now known as
Sir Sandford Fleming Park (Dingle Park). He also kept residence in
Ottawa, and was buried there, in the
Beechwood Cemetery.
His accomplishments were well known world wide, and in 1897 he was
knighted by
Queen Victoria. Fleming Hall was built in his honour at
Queen's in 1901, and rebuilt after a fire in 1932. It was the home of the university's Electrical Engineering faculty.
In
Peterborough, Ontario,
Fleming College, a
Community College of Applied Arts and Technology bearing his name, was opened in 1967, with additional campuses in
Lindsay/Kawartha Lakes,
Haliburton, and
Cobourg. Also, a building in the
University of Toronto is named after Fleming (Sandford Fleming building). It belongs to the
University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.
Further Information
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