Question

Before long the whole of britain was running by the clock, and the measurement of time had been severed from the natural cycle of days and seasons. the clock ruled every aspect of life — shops and schools, pleasure and work. as charles dickens wrote, ‘there was even railway time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in.’ nigel thrift explains: the chronometer, an exceptionally accurate clock, meant that gradually an ever more accurate measure of time became possible, and that of course worked through other things in the nineteenth century to produce ever more standardized time. a good example of that is the railway, where standard time based on the meridian was first applied by the great western railway in 1840 and gradually that standard time became general. macgregor mainly engages the reader through the use of a(n) anecdote. description. opinion. quotation.

Answer 1

MacGregor uses a quotation to engage the reader on the topic of time standardization due to railways, highlighting the shift from local time to the widespread adoption of Greenwich Mean Time and the establishment of standard time zones.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the passage discussing the impact of time standardization due to railways, MacGregor utilizes a quotation to engage the reader. The transformation of societal routines with the standardization of time is particularly exemplified by the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) by railways, which later spread to become the basis for time zones across continents. Before this, local times varied across cities and posed challenges for scheduling, prompting the need for a uniform system, especially for railroads and telegraphs which required synchronization across long distances.

In the United States, this led to the creation of four standard time zones in 1883. This standardization of time greatly facilitated interstate commerce and reduced confusion in transportation and communication. Innovations such as the chronometer and time clocks further supported the division of time into uniform segments, fundamentally altering the relationship between daily life and time.