The Forgotten History of Time Zones and Standardized Time

[00:00:00]time zones are a fact of distance travel those 24 more or less longitudinal lines that go around the earth and help us all agreed as to what time it is so we can get our our appointments on time and well that means that it's different time in different places it's a different time in Los Angeles than it is in New York than it is in London you have to understand that through much of human history the differences in those times was relative it wasn't exact it's a relatively new thing that people got together and decided to regulate times by a set of rules and that change came about because of historical events and changing needs Pramod among those train schedules the development of that system that we so take for granted today is history that deserves to be remembered throughout history mankind has tracked time the earliest civilizations used water clocks Sun dials candles and more society quickly found it necessary to track time in order to function but before mechanical clocks it was mostly a guessing game tracking the Sun can only be so precise and across distance time varies with longitude by about four minutes for each degree east or west well locally useful to track this on any city doing so was necessarily working under its own specific time zone for most of human history that was good enough a matter of a few minutes or a quarter of an hour for someone traveling across town doesn't cause problems and travel and trade move slowly enough that the change in local time was usually not disorienting this all began to change by the 19th century our mechanical clocks were first invented in the 14th century in Europe improved Springs and mechanical technology helped to make pocket watches a popular and functional fashion statement by the 18th century clocks were much more accurate and the Industrial Revolution help to turn clocks into a household item another technology was developing and proliferating at the same time that would drive the development of time zones the train trains enabled a completely new kind of society with the ability to transport people and goods much larger distances much faster than before of course they were limited to the rails and as the number of trains increase so too did the need for efficient organization in 1840 the Great Western Railway which connected London to much of Western and southwestern England adopted Greenwich Mean Time as their standard time DMT was first established in 1675 with the construction of the Royal Observatory not for trains but for ships GMT is determined by the mean solar time in Greenwich which is determined with map that denote the average local noon because it is an average the actual noon in Brenna's can be up to 15 minutes different from GMT using the device called a chronometer which is basically a clock a British ship could look at the observed local noon when the Sun is directly over your head wherever they are compare that to the difference with Greenwich Mean Time and use that to determine their longitude railways across England recognize the value of shared time and they followed suit and shared clock was called railway time by 1855 most clocks in England use Greenwich Mean Time although some had a second minute hand that would display the local time as well GMT wasn't adopted officially in England until August 2nd 1880 unstandardized time had some very serious real-life consequences in 1853 a couple of employees in charge of the schedule made a mistake that caused the death of 14 people in a train collision their mistake they each had their watches set to different times revel collisions were so common that railway companies kept thousands of surgeons on staff to deal with injuries and many of those accidents were caused by errors in timekeeping railroads did everything they could to minimize the chances of errors supplying workers with watches and even employing time guards who traveled the rails and wrote a penny railway employees whose watches were off in the u.s. standardized railway time was perhaps even more important than in England given the massive distances involved unfortunately was also more difficult to convince them to change to a standardized time hundreds of towns the u.s. maintained their own local times it was noon in Philadelphia it was 1204 in New York 1216 in Boston and 11:45 in Buffalo to some people local time was a matter of autonomy that they didn't want taken away railroads were not exactly jumping on board either each railway maintained its own time usually based on the local time of the headquarters or their busiest station and some train stations maintained several clocks with different rail companies times thousands of schedules and clocks were set to those time and all of them would have to be changed for standard time to work perhaps most importantly England could manage it by instituting one timezone but in the US the proposals range from four to as many as a dozen time zones the biggest problem facing the US was that adoption of a standard time had to be nearly Universal for it to work at all if only a few locations or railroads changed the problem would still remain as early as 1809 and an astronomer named William Lambert sent a letter to Thomas Jefferson advocating for the adoption of time meridians in the United States Charles Dowd a teacher at the temple Grove ladies Seminary in Saratoga Springs New York first proposed the system for time zones to some teenage students in 1863 but it wasn't until 1869 that he spoke to railway executives to suggest his concept for us time zones each 15 degrees in latitude that spanned the u.s. from coast to coast he eventually decided that the time zones will begin at 75 degrees west of Greenwich then every 15 degrees thereafter he published a system of national time for railroads in 1870 despite the merits of his suggestion it was met with resounding silence the men who finally pushed the adoption of US time zones was William F Allen a railway engineer and editor of the travellers official railway guide he presented at a conference in Chicago called the general railway time convention in October 1883 where he's able to wrangle them into accepting a system of Standard Time with five time zones the intercolonial now known as the Atlantic in eastern Canada eastern central mountain and Pacific each one hour apart intercolonial was made specifically for the intercolonial railway of southeastern Canada although they eventually chose to follow Eastern Time instead even before the convention the railway companies seemed to have decided that it was time to switch to Standard Time which made Allen's job considerably easier when he offered his new system the railways managed the massive logistical problem of changing the time in a shockingly short amount of time it all culminated in the official change on November 18th 1883 called the day of two Noons each timezone made the switch at noon in their local time Allen still had a long job ahead of him he was a US delegate to the International Meridian conference held in Washington DC in 1884 the conference was held at the request of president Chester Arthur and sought to determine a Meridian to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world twelve nations agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian Allen also helped to convince city governments businesses and scientific institutions to adopt the standard within a year 85 percent of cities with a population over 10,000 had switched to the new standard although some cities continued to hold out Detroit maintained local time keeping until 1905 and then went through a series of other standards before adopting Central Time in 1915 the u.s.

[00:07:15]put an end to much of confusion when they officially adopted time zones in the Standard Time Act of 1918 which put time zones under the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission although the act originally accidentally put most of the state of Idaho in the wrong time zone this Act also established daylight savings time as a wartime measure but it was unpopular was overturned in 1919 FDR re-established daylight savings time called wartime during World War two and it ended in 1945 however some states continued to observe daylight savings time even the effort was repealed finally in 1972 Congress sets standards for daylight savings time including allowing States to exempt themselves from it international time zones had first been suggested by Italian mathematician carico Philip Ponte in his 1858 book miranda although it was largely ignored until after his death Sandford Fleming a Scottish born Canadian railway engineer began pushing for international time zones beginning in 1879 supposedly because he missed a train thanks to a misprinted schedule he publicized his concept at a number of global conferences including the International Meridian conference in 1884 but the conference did not fully adopt a system well defined a 24-hour day based on Greenwich Mean Time it made no attempt to supersede local times once it had begun more and more countries began to accept Universal Time so it wasn't until 1956 that the last country Nepal accepted a time zone based on Greenwich Mean Time the International Astronomical Union first referred to GMT as Universal Time in 1928 the invention of the cesium atomic clock in 1955 led to the informal coordinated Universal Time turn officially adopted by the IAU in 1967 which later became the basis for what we now call UTC which is still essentially based on the time at the prime meridian the acronym UTC is actually a compromise between English and French speakers as in English the acronym would be Cu T and in French tu C UTC matched the previous use of U T for universal time while not favoring any particular language though time zones are used widely today the matter of what time it is remains a matter of debate and change over the last 15 years at least 20 counties in the US have changed what times on their end and time zones having a general sense Allah moved west as countries change for instance Indiana which was first in the central time zone now most observes Eastern Time of course a number of countries have their own quirks the Communist Chinese regime chose to observe only a single time zone which makes the largest shift in time apart from crossing the International Dateline to be crossing the 47-mile border between China and Afghanistan in fact political motivations have changed time before Francisco Franco switch Spain from Greenwich Mean Time to Central European time in solidarity with Hitler's Germany France was made to switch to Central European time after it was occupied and never switched back after the war other countries offset their time by a half or a quarter hour instead of full hours but no matter how we measure time it's an essential part of society measuring it is is a vital element in working together an integral if taken for granted part of keeping all the cogs of society spinning together there are some other proposals for how we should measure time for example the hankie Henry universal calendar would have us move to a single Universal clock and of course time zones are much easier today when we have cell phones which link through cell towers to atomic clocks and automatically adjust when you move time zones although that system is also not exactly perfect but no matter what we do to measure time in the future whether we move to a universal clock or whether we continue to use or give up daylight savings time time is still one of those few constants or certainties in our lives it is literally what we use to determine what is our present to predict our future and to record our history deserves to be remembered I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]