Greenwich meridian adopted worldwide The first proposal to adopt the Greenwich meridian was put forth in 1876 when the engineer and inventor Sandford Fleming called for a global 24-hour clock. It was proposed that the Greenwhich meridian would be the single time-zone setting to function as the baseline for the rest of the world. At the behest of the President of the United States of America, Grover Cleveland, 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, DC, for the International Meridian Conference during October 1884. On 1 November 1884, delegates at the conference adopted the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in London as the site of the Universal Time Meridian. Image Credit Title: International Meridian Conference, Washington, D.C., 1884. Caption: Conference delegates, on the steps of the State-War-Navy Building. Those present are identified on the mat, including the conference president, Rear Admiral C. R. P. Rogers, USN (Ret.). Catalog #: NH 96688 courtesy of the Naval History & Heritage Command