Sandford Fleming

Born

January 7, 1827

Died

July 22, 1915 (aged 88)

Known as

postage stamp designer, inventor, engineer

Sir Sandford Fleming was a Scottish engineer and inventor. Born and raised in Scotland, he immigrated to colonial Canada at the age of 18. He promoted worldwide standard time zones, a prime meridian, and use of the 24-hour clock as key elements to communicating the accurate time, all of which influenced the creation of Coordinated Universal Time. He designed Canada's first postage stamp, produced a great deal of work in the fields of land surveying and map making, engineered much of the Intercolonial Railway and the first several hundred kilometers of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada and founder of the Canadian Institute.

Biography from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.