Safehold International Date Line

I was re-reading the series and got to thinking about time zones. Where is the international date line for Safehold? We get a lot of "it is earlier here than there" in the text, but where does the date reset?

Since there's no evidence of the use of standard times, and in fact no reason for them [other than the fact that the folks who invented the culture were probably accustomed to using them], that is rather a meaningless question. Wherever you are, tomorrow follows today at the beginning of Langhorne's Watch, and your clock is probably set by observing local noon, the moment when the sun is highest in the sky. Asking what time, or even what day, it is someplace else isn't something that would occur to people because if that place is out of sight of where you are it doesn't matter anymore than it did here before the later 19th century.

ryndieum wrote:I was re-reading the series and got to thinking about time zones. Where is the international date line for Safehold? We get a lot of "it is earlier here than there" in the text, but where does the date reset?

ryndieum wrote:I was re-reading the series and got to thinking about time zones. Where is the international date line for Safehold? We get a lot of "it is earlier here than there" in the text, but where does the date reset?

The Dateline is 180 degrees from the Temple/

If Safehold has a Dateline, then that's the most likely location.

Weird Harold wrote:

ryndieum wrote:I was re-reading the series and got to thinking about time zones. Where is the international date line for Safehold? We get a lot of "it is earlier here than there" in the text, but where does the date reset?

The Dateline is 180 degrees from the Temple/

Weird Harold wrote:

ryndieum wrote:I was re-reading the series and got to thinking about time zones. Where is the international date line for Safehold? We get a lot of "it is earlier here than there" in the text, but where does the date reset?

The Dateline is 180 degrees from the Temple/

IRL, Set Time zones and items like the date line wern't important until the advent of train lines and the telegraph, when you were attempting to coordinate movements over vast distances and send messages instantaneously around the world.

Previously everybody just set their Town clock to the local noon from the sun angle, with each town to the east and west being slightly earlier or later. No two towns would have exactly the same time due to the sun angle. No one cared about a date line because all you cared about was the local midnight - you couldn't compare it to any thing else.

So Harold's essentially correct - If the temple were considered the same as Grenwich - the prime time piece, 180 degrees opposite is essentially the date line - but no common Safeholder would care.

I have to think that the 'archangels' would have both had to set something like this up for themselves (they had technological clocks after all) but also would very carefully NOT have revealed it to the 'peons'. This would be something that would be far too technologically advanced for a world they wanted to keep pre-technological.

And of course we all know that Britain was able to set the Prime Meridian on Earth because they had the world-spanning empire with a navy to back it up. Granted they got lucky, they probably had no idea the dateline would end up in the middle of the ocean when they did this, but it worked out. So even if the archangels originally set this up as based in Zion, if as I strongly suspect they didn't tell anyone their 'ruling' here then I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised to find Tellesberg follow in London's footsteps here.

It would also work better. Using Zion would probably put the dateline in the middle of the Raven Lands or Chisholm somewhere, or maybe Emerald. Using Tellesberg just might get it to barely offshore from Harchong. Of course can't actually be sure of that, but it seems 'more likely' to fit.

Theemile wrote:
IRL, Set Time zones and items like the date line wern't important until the advent of train lines and the telegraph, when you were attempting to coordinate movements over vast distances and send messages instantaneously around the world.

I believe IC com conversations occasionally referred to time zones (once the IC was large enough that it had members scattered over a good chunk of the globe), but that might have been a Merlin-term that they got in the habit of using instead of a native Safehold term.

That said, between rail lines and air travel, I think we're close to if not at the point where Safehold is going to need formalized time zones and an International Date Line. If the Archangels assumed local time would be all their pawns needed, the "start point" could end up anywhere depending on who first comes up with the idea.

It will be a while yet. Without electrical telegraphy, messages won't move enough faster than either trains or airships for the coordination issues that drove the creation of standard time to arise. And, frankly, those 'issues' were made up out of whole cloth in the first place. If it turns out that Safehold has had its fill of control freaks, courtesy of one Vicar Zhaspahr, you could find that nobody ever cares whether the trains run on time: 'about an hour before noon' or 'during Langhorne's Watch' could be quite good enough - and often more accurate, to boot.

Julia Minor wrote:

Theemile wrote:
IRL, Set Time zones and items like the date line wern't important until the advent of train lines and the telegraph, when you were attempting to coordinate movements over vast distances and send messages instantaneously around the world.

I believe IC com conversations occasionally referred to time zones (once the IC was large enough that it had members scattered over a good chunk of the globe), but that might have been a Merlin-term that they got in the habit of using instead of a native Safehold term.

That said, between rail lines and air travel, I think we're close to if not at the point where Safehold is going to need formalized time zones and an International Date Line. If the Archangels assumed local time would be all their pawns needed, the "start point" could end up anywhere depending on who first comes up with the idea.

Louis R wrote:It will be a while yet. Without electrical telegraphy, messages won't move enough faster than either trains or airships for the coordination issues that drove the creation of standard time to arise. And, frankly, those 'issues' were made up out of whole cloth in the first place. If it turns out that Safehold has had its fill of control freaks, courtesy of one Vicar Zhaspahr, you could find that nobody ever cares whether the trains run on time: 'about an hour before noon' or 'during Langhorne's Watch' could be quite good enough - and often more accurate, to boot.

Trains will be about the only thing in the near future (in the eyes of the populace, that is) that will require it, as Train schedules are important for selling tickets and planning train movements (especially when planning schedules on single track routes, you need to make sure the trains are timed so a siding is near when trains are scheduled to pass each other.) IRT, Time zones were originally an invention of train planners after all.

Theemile wrote:
IRL, Set Time zones and items like the date line wern't important until the advent of train lines and the telegraph, when you were attempting to coordinate movements over vast distances and send messages instantaneously around the world.

The Temple have semaphore, don't forget. Not as fast as telegraph, but MUCH faster than trains.

And frankly, considering how thoroughly Archangels done their work on Safehold lore, I doubt that they would miss such thing as establishing the universal time. It would be rather simple - just declare that the date line is on the Temple.