The Biographical Dictionary of America/Allen, William Frederick

ALLEN, William Frederick, metrologist, was born in Bordentown, N. J., Oct. 9, 1846; son of Col. Joseph Warner Allen, a civil engineer, state senator, deputy quarter-master-general and colonel of the 9th New Jersey volunteers, who, while serving with his regiment in Burnside's expedition on the coast of North Carolina, 1861-'63, was drowned off Hatteras inlet while endeavoring to report to the commanding general during the storm, Jan. 13, 1862. William Frederick attended the Protestant Episcopal academy in Philadelphia, Pa. In 1862, after his father's death, he became a rodman on the Camden & Amboy railroad, and in 1863 was promoted to be assistant engineer. In 1868 he became resident engineer of the West Jersey railroad; on Oct. 1, 1872, assistant editor of the Official Railway Guide, and in May, 1873, was made its editor, and business manager of the National railway publication company, then of Philadelphia, afterward of New York. In 1875 Mr. Allen was elected permanent secretary of the general time convention, composed of the general managers and superintendents of the principal railroad trunk lines, which then met to determine upon schedules of through trains on the eastern and western roads. In the following year he was elected secretary of the southern time convention, consisting of representatives of the leading southern railway lines. These conventions were consolidated in 1886, and from them the American railway association, composed of companies operating and controlling 186,000 miles of road, was developed, and Mr. Allen became secretary of the association. By unanimous resolutions of the conventions his services were acknowledged for the formulation of the plan, and the accomplishment of the practical part of the work, which culminated in the adoption of standard time, based upon the Greenwich hour-meridians, by the United States and Canada, Nov. 18, 1883. The same system was subsequently adopted by other countries, and came into general use in Japan, the Philippines, Porto Rico, Spain, Australia, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Roumania, Servia, and part of Turkey, for which purpose a large amount of information was furnished by Mr. Allen. He was appointed by President Arthur one of the five delegates who represented the United States at the international meridian conference held in Washington, D.C., in October, 1884. Twenty-five nations were represented and the Greenwich meridian was adopted as the prime meridian and standard of time reckoning. An address delivered by him at this time on standard time as adopted in the United States was reprinted in many languages, with the proceedings of the conference. On April 22, 1890, he was elected as honorary member of the K.K. geographical society of Vienna, Austria, in recognition of his services in the adoption of standard time. He was selected as one of eight delegates to represent the American railway association at the meeting of the international railway congress, held in London, 1895, and one of six delegates, and an official U.S. delegate, to the congress in Paris in 1900 He was one of the council of the American metrological society for introducing the metric system; a member of the American society of civil engineers; a member of the American economic society; of the American society for the advancement of science; of the American academy of political and social science, and of the American statistical association.