In 1802, the port city of Madras, for all official purposes, was gifted with the knowledge of its ‘place’ in the world.

John Goldingham, working from the Madras Observatory in Nungambakkam, identified the longitude of the city as 80°18’30” east of the Greenwich Meridian, five hours and 30 minutes ahead of the mean time.

With the newly-instituted coordinates, days officially began at midnight, as opposed to sunrise. For the first time in the subcontinent, an official local time zone could be used.

For the mercantile British rulers, for whom the adage ‘time is money’ struck close to home, it was imperative that Madras Time remain consistent and accurate.

At Fort St. George, a time gun was shot at noon and 8 p.m., every day. The dropping of the semaphore near the marine office at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. further kept tabs on the ticking clock.

In 1884, with the International Meridian Conference in Washington D.C, Bombay and Calcutta were declared British India’s two official time zones.

Threatening to severely complicate the functioning of the railways, the government was compelled to adopt a standard time that could function as an intermediary between the two time zones. Madras, by virtue of its equidistant positioning, lent itself to exactly this.

Madras Time thus became ‘railway time’. By the late 19 century, the entire subcontinent (except Madras) was straddling two time zones — local time and ‘railway (Madras) time’.

Jim Masseoles, an Australian historian, in his essay ‘Bombay Time’, notes that all train schedules had Madras Time printed beside the local time from then on.

Madras, in effect, clocked time for the entire country. In 1881, Sir James Fergusson, the Governor of Bombay Presidency, created quite a stir when he unilaterally passed a government resolution to shift to Madras Time, which was quickly rescinded, consequently.

In many ways, Madras Time was the precursor to the Indian Standard Time (IST), established in 1906. Interestingly, even when Madras had to shift to IST, the city lucked out by resetting its clocks merely nine minutes in advance.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Nitya Menon / Chennai – August 22nd, 2014