November 18 – Time Zone Day

nPostednon November 18, 2015

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Arrangingna time system by the position of the sun makes a whole lot of sense.nThe sun rises in the morning, is overhead at noon, and sets in thenevening. Whatever your time system is, you get used to thosenmorning-noon-evening times (for example, sunrises around 7:00 a.m.,nnoon at 12:00 p.m., and sunsets around 7:00 p.m.).

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nButnof course, in the modern world we often talk to, listen to, or evennplay games with people who live far away—even halfway around thenworld! The further away from home, the more radically different thenposition of the sun—and when you are talking about halfway aroundnthe world, we are talking about day here being night there, and vicenversa.

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nOurncommunications have gone pretty much instant and global. But ourntransportation is pretty quick, in the modern world, as well. Wenoften drive and fly long distances—and we can then see firsthandnthe local-time-by-sun being different in different places. If yountime it just right, you can take off in a plane at 7:00 a.m. and flyna long distance and then land at 7:00 a.m. on the same day! One timenmy family chased a sunset—it seemed to linger above the horizon forna long time as we streaked westward.

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nWhennthe world was just starting the communication and transportationnrevolution, in the second half of the 1800s, with the advent ofntelegraphs and telephones and continent-straddling railroads, peoplenfor the first time began to run into problems dealing with all thendifferent local times people were living by.

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nAccordingnto Time and Date,nevery city in the U.S. used a different time standard. Along thenroute of the various railroad tracks, there were more than 300ndifferent sun times to choose from as they announced their schedulesnof arrivals and departures.

nThatnmade the railroad schedule pretty tricky!

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nRailroadnmanagers established time zones, lumping together nearby sun times.nBut what they set up were 100 railroad time zones! Still a bit of anhandful!

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nFinally,non this date in 1883, railroad managers decided to make a much morenstreamlined schedule: just four standard time zones for thencontinental United States and Canada.

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nBritainnhad already adopted a standard time system for all of England,nScotland, and Wales, and people of both Britain and the U.S. urgednthe rest of the world to adopt time zones. Perhaps surprisingly, itnonly took a year to obtain an international standard time system.

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nChecknout this zoomable world time zones map.nNote that there are some “and-a-half” time zones, and there are anlot of wavery-quavery bits in the lines between time zones.n There are also some time zones that have very little land mass in thenzones!

nAlsonon this date: