Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · January 7, 1868

OVERSHOT THE MARK.—The following paragraph appeared in the N. Y. Tribune of Dec. 25, 1867.

“A telegraphic dispatch the other day came from London to Washington in nine and a half minutes. Suppose it to have kept on around the world, the circuit would have been made within an hour. What said Shakespeare? ‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’ If the dispatch referred to above had started from London at one minute past eleven on Dec. 20, it would have gone around the globe and arrived at its starting point by fifty-eight minutes past eleven Dec. 19—apparently making the girdle of the earth nearly twenty-four hours before it started. ‘Canst thou send the lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are?’”

By carrying the dispatch around to its starting point, the reader will see, upon a moment’s thought, that the Tribune has carried it too far; for the time of its arrival would there be marked by the same clock that gave the time of its departure, and that would certainly mark the time as fifty-seven minutes later, not twenty-three hours earlier. The dispatch would gain time only till it reached the point, wherever that is, where the day begins, and to that point only would the reasoning of the Tribune apply. The transmission of a message from London to Washington in nine and a half minutes, is a telegraphic feat worthy of record in this age of wonders; but the Tribune draws altogether too largely on our credulity in its unfortunate attempt at supposing a case.