Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 1976
Time is so much a part of everyday experience that no thought is normally given to the meaning of the word. The scientific measurement of a quantity such as time, however, requires the definition of a gauge as a standard of measurement that is reasonably invariant to human experience and the creation of a measurement language capable of independent empirical reproduction so that one laboratory can share experience with another using only a written language to do so.
Time as a means of scientific measurement for navigation requires a further extension of this experience to independent reproduction on a moving craft.