Read the excerpt from Ship's Chronometer from HMS Beagle.Before long the whole of Britain was running by the clock, and the measurement of time had been severed from the natural cycle of days and seasons. The clock ruled every aspect of life — shops and schools, pleasure and work. As Charles Dickens wrote, ‘There was even railway time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in.’ Nigel Thrift explains:The chronometer, an exceptionally accurate clock, meant that gradually an ever more accurate measure of time became possible, and that of course worked through other things in the nineteenth century to produce ever more standardized time. A good example of that is the railway, where standard time based on the meridian was first applied by the Great Western Railway in 1840 and gradually that standard time became general.