Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/752

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726
TILAK—TIME

measures, a Joint Commission for the improvement of waterways in Chihli was formed in 1918, upon the recommendation of the Haiho Conservancy Board, under the presidency of Hsiung Hsi-ling, with the assistance of European engineers and experts; in addition to the local work of river conservancy, this Board is charged to report on ways and means for restoring the navigability of the Grand Canal between Tientsin and the Yellow river, which has been for many years impracticable at certain seasons.

The foreign garrisons (American, British, French, German, Japanese and Russian) stationed at and around Tientsin under the terms of the Peace Protocol of 1901, for the protection of railway communication between Peking and the sea, were considerably increased after the outbreak of the revolution in 1911. At the end of 1913 their combined forces at Tientsin amounted to 6,000 men; but in the autumn of 1914 most of those belonging to the belligerent Powers were withdrawn. In March 1917 the Chinese Government took over charge of the German Concession ; on Aug. 14 the Austrians were similarly dispossessed. Since then, both Concessions have been administered, in accordance with preexisting municipal regulations, by the Chinese authorities. (J. O. P. B.)


TILAK, BAL GANGADHAR (1856-1920), Indian nationalist leaVier and orientalist, was born July 23 1856, at Ratnagiri, where his father, a Chitpavan Brahman, was an educational officer. At the Deccan College, Poona, he graduated in arts with honours in 1876,. and took the LL.B. degree in 1879. In the following year he took the lead in providing secondary and higher education in Poona under Indian direction by founding an English school and the famous Fergusson College. Tilak conducted law classes till 1890, by which time he had become the sole proprietor as well as the editor of the two weekly papers, the Mahratta (in English) and the Kesari (" Lion " in Mahratti) which he and his friends had founded in 1880. These were the chief printed media of his anti-Government propaganda; but he took every advantage of public activities, such as membership of the local municipality and the organizing of Shivaji and Gan- pati celebrations, to work upon the prejudices and passions both of the masses and of the educated minority. Identifying himself with Brahmanical orthodoxy he bitterly opposed social reforms. His violent condemnation in 1897 of the plague prevention regulations was followed by the assassination of the local plague commissioner (Mr. Rand) and a young British officer driving with him at the time. Convicted of sedition, he was sentenced to 18 months' rigorous imprisonment, but he was released within a year under pledges of good behaviour. In prison he pursued the Vedic studies which had already given him a place in oriental scholarship. His elaborate paper on " The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas," read at the International Congress of Orientalists, London 1892 (published at Poona, - 1893), was followed in 1903 by his " Arctic Home in the Vedas " expounding a theory of extremely remote Aryan origins which has failed to secure the acceptance of other scholars. Tilak was twice elected to the Bombay Legislature for triennial terms. Again indicted for sedition in June 1908, he was sentenced by a Parsi judge (Mr. Justice Davar) to six years' transportation, afterwards commuted on account of age and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay. On release in 1914 he actively promoted the home-rule campaign, and at last succeeded, after the death in 1915 of G. K. Gokhale, in his prolonged struggle to secure for his party control of the Indian National Congress. A libel suit he instituted in London against Sir Valentine Chirol for statements made in Indian Unrest (1910) ended in a verdict for the defendant with costs (Feb. 21 1919). On returning to India he refrained from definite association with the non-co- operation cult. His death in Bombay, Aug. i 1920, was followed by demonstrations of mourning throughout India, showing his remarkable hold on the popular mind.

Tilak's formative part in the cult of Indian unrest is shown in the Report of the Rowlatt Sedition Committee, 1918. His speeches are collected with an appreciation by Aurobinda Ghose in Lokamanaya B. G. Tilak, Madras, 2nd edition, 1920. (F. H. BR.)


TILLETT, BENJAMIN (1860- ), British Labour politician, was born at Bristol, Sept. n 1860. He started work in a brickyard at eight years and was a " Risley " boy for two years. At 12 years he served for six months on a fishing smack, was afterwards apprenticed to a bootmaker and then joined the Royal Navy. He was invalided out of the navy and made several voyages in merchant ships. He then settled at the London Docks, and organized the Dockers' Union of which he became general secretary in June 1887, taking a prominent part in the dock strike of 1889. He was subsequently one of the pioneer i organizers of the General Federation of Trades, National Trans- I port Workers' Federation, National Federation of General Workers, International Transport Federation, and the Labour party. For many years he was an alderman on the L.C.C. After standing for Parliament unsuccessfully four times, he was elected in 1917 as Labour member for N. Salford. In 1910 he published A Brief History of the Dockers' Union, commemorating the 1889 dockers' strike, and in 1911 A History of the London Transport Workers' Strike.

TIME (see 26.983). The progress of wireless telegraphy has greatly simplified accurate determination of Greenwich time and consequently of longitude.

Determination of Time. The chief difficulty in determining local time from observations of the altitudes of celestial objects is that of getting a satisfactory horizon. In the case of airships the view of the horizon is much interfered with by cloud, and the dip of the horizon is a more important and uncertain factor than in ordinary navigation at sea. When the airship R34 crossed the Atlantic in 1919 observations were made from a "cloud horizon" the height of which could not be known with accuracy. During the World War several sextants were designed in which the use of a pendulum or level enables the altitude of celestial objects to be determined without reference to the horizon, but they have not come into general use. ' For the determination of Greenwich time at sea astronomical methods have been practically abandoned, and extreme accuracy in chronometers is no longer necessary. Signals are sent out daily at specific instants of Greenwich mean time from such stations as the Eiffel Tower, Lyons, Nauen, Annapolis, Darien, Honolulu and (";t[>e Town, and it should be possible to pick up one or more of these signals at any point on the earth's surface. The time shown by a chronometer can, therefore, be checked by wireless at least once a day, and since the astronomical observations made by a navigator for ascertaining local time are accurate only to i' of arc, corre- sponding to 4 sec. of time, a chronometer which can be relied on to within 4 sec. a day is sufficient. This is far within the limit of modern chronometers.

A new method of determining positions on the earth's surface, independently of time altogetherj has recently become possible, although it is still far short of attaining the desired degree of accu- racy. The direction of a wireless transmitting station can now be determined by the receiving station to within about 3, and if the directions of two transmitting stations are known the position of the receiver can be found. Accuracy is of course greatest where the two transmitting stations subtend a wide angle, and the best results are obtained when the wireless waves can be sent out from the point, the position of which is to be determined and the directions found by two land stations. The method promises to be of great service in aerial navigation, and for ships near the coast m foggy weather. In the beginning of 1921 nine wireless direction stations in the British Isles, sixteen in France, four in Germany and one in Italy were available for navigational purposes.

The position of buoys in the North Sea has been determined by the time required by sound to reach special receiving apparatus at fixed points on the coast. This method was introduced soon after the Armistice in Nov. 1918, but its application is limited to distances of loo or at most 200 miles.

Accurate Determinations of Time and Longitude. The precision of time observations has been greatly increased by the use of the self-registering micrometer in observing transits. With this micrometer the personality of different observers is reduced to o!oi to O?O2, so that the exchange of observers for longitude determinations is only necessary in work of the very highest accuracy. The sending and receiving of rhythmic wireless time signals has reached such a degree of accuracy that the clocks at distant stations can be compared toofoi or less. It should therefore be a simple matter to make accurate longitude determinations. The value of the new methods was fully established in the determination of the difference of longitude between Paris and Washington in 19134, when the result obtained was 5 h l7 m 36!653 ^003.

Standard Time. The use of a system of zones of standard time has been considerably extended.

Greenwich time is now (1921) adopted in the British Isles, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France and the Faroe Islands. Mid-European time (i h. fast on Greenwich) is used in Germany, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and the western parts of the Balkan peninsula ; and E. European time (2 h. fast on Greenwich) in the eastern parts of the Balkan peninsula, including Greece. Time in Iceland is I h. slow on Greenwich. Russia still adheres to Pulkovo (Pulkowa) time, 2 h. I min. fast on Greenwich. Divisions of lesa