Throughout the 1880s, the only country to do anything really concrete was Japan, which legislated in 1886 and formally adopted the Greenwich Meridian and a standard time nine hours in advance of Greenwich at the start of 1888. At the Fifth International Geographical Congress in 1891, the Indian Government delegate lamented the lack of progress stating:
The meridian question ... has certainly advanced far enough that all English maps should possess a common origin for longitude. At present this is not so, for maps of India ... are published with a different longitude ... from the true Greenwich value ... a continuance of the present system is a grave disadvantage if we wish to persuade other nations to adopt Greenwich as the longitude of origin.