“He (civilized man) has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s too bad that Emerson isn’t alive to visit Eastern’s campus because he would have to realize that the students on campus may have had more in common with his backwoods lifestyle then he would ever have imagined.

I assume that Emerson would have loved to see that it is a more accurate way to tell time by the position of the sun than by simply looking at one of the clocks in some of Eastern’s buildings.

If a person does look at certain clocks around campus to plan his or her day, he or she most likely will be well ahead of time or a ways behind it.

Take for example a clock in Buzzard Hall that would keep anyone a good five minutes early to just about everything he or she is planning. Another clock would have students believe that it is 2:39 all day and night long.

Even the largest and most prominent clock on campus, the golden one that is placed on the front of McAfee Gymnasium, isn’t correct. Just looking at it yesterday, anybody could become confused about the time of day because it was an hour ahead.

One person, besides Emerson, who wouldn’t be all that pleased with Eastern’s lack of quality time keeping is University of Illinois professor William Hammack.

Also known as the “engineering guy,” which is the name of his Web site, Hammack discusses time in articles and through his public radio program.

Besides looking at time, he keys on different issues that involve other engineering-related matters.

Hammack makes it clear just how crucial time can be in certain instances. When the matter of time is thought of as Hammack thinks of it, it is obvious that having Eastern run such things as air traffic control centers would not be a good idea. In fact, it could be a life threatening idea.

“Just the other day I flew into Champaign Airport,” Hammack said. “On the flight, the pilot had a 300-foot ceiling and they used the global positioning service, which relies on time, to keep the positioning of the aircraft.

“If that timing system would be just one-billionth of a second off, instead of giving my wife a hug at the airport, disaster could have struck that airplane.”

If that doesn’t make anybody who may be hesitant to fly in the first place a little more nervous, at least he or she can take comfort in the fact that Eastern’s clocks aren’t keeping track of that billionth of a second.

Not that time here on campus is that important, but wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to go around and plan one’s day around clocks that represent the true time?

But as it is right now, the matter of simply looking to see what time it is can be more of a problem than one might bargain for.

Going back to Emerson, I guess students here should either learn how to tell by the position of the sun what time it is or go out and buy one of those Geneva watches he is talking about.

Either way, it will probably lead to a more accurate reading of what time it really is.