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NOVEMBER 18 | TIME ZONES
At noon on Sunday, November 18, 1883, the railroads standardized American time. According to their plan, when it was noon in their newly created Eastern time zone, it would be 11 a.m. in their Central zone, 10 a.m. in their Mountain zone, and 9 a.m. in their Pacific zone.
At the appointed moment for the changeover, the railroads had the U.S. Naval Observatory telegraph the time to Western Union. Western Union then telegraphed all its subscribers one of the four new times depending on which time zone they were in.
Prior to November 18, 1883, Western Union had telegraphed its subscribers their own local time, which was based on when the sun passed overhead locally. Each community’s public clocks were synchronized to Western Union’s time, and local people who had watches set them to what the town clocks said.
By local time New York City was 12 minutes behind Boston and four minutes ahead of Philadelphia, but nobody really cared about these small differences. When the expanding railroads found themselves trying to schedule trains through as many as 300 of these local time zones, however, something had to give.
First the different rail lines established regions within which they could run on regional railroad time. But there were still too many regions for travelers to keep track of, and regional times still differed from local times. By the 1880s the railroads were ready for a national standard time.
Astronomers were already interested in having a standard time, so when the railroads proposed their plan, astronomers were ready to support them. The railroads assured their success in part by turning to the authority of the U.S. Naval Observatory for the time signal that would launch their new time zones.
But their bigger victory was convincing Western Union to transmit this new time from then on. The revolution in timekeeping occurred without a glitch. People who had been used to intuiting time by the position of the sun suddenly saw the railroad’s time on their local clocks.
Because this new time could be almost thirty minutes ahead of or behind the sun, many were uncomfortable, but it was too late to do anything. Since November 18, 1883, no one except farmers — and naturalists — has really needed to pay much attention to the sun, and the sad truth is that fewer and fewer people do.
At noon on Sunday, November 18, 1883, the railroads standardized American time. According to their plan, when it was noon in their newly created Eastern time zone, it would be 11 a.m. in their Central zone, 10 a.m. in their Mountain zone, and 9 a.m. in their Pacific zone.
At the appointed moment for the changeover, the railroads had the U.S. Naval Observatory telegraph the time to Western Union. Western Union then telegraphed all its subscribers one of the four new times depending on which time zone they were in.
Prior to November 18, 1883, Western Union had telegraphed its subscribers their own local time, which was based on when the sun passed overhead locally. Each community’s public clocks were synchronized to Western Union’s time, and local people who had watches set them to what the town clocks said.
By local time New York City was 12 minutes behind Boston and four minutes ahead of Philadelphia, but nobody really cared about these small differences. When the expanding railroads found themselves trying to schedule trains through as many as 300 of these local time zones, however, something had to give.
First the different rail lines established regions within which they could run on regional railroad time. But there were still too many regions for travelers to keep track of, and regional times still differed from local times. By the 1880s the railroads were ready for a national standard time.
Astronomers were already interested in having a standard time, so when the railroads proposed their plan, astronomers were ready to support them. The railroads assured their success in part by turning to the authority of the U.S. Naval Observatory for the time signal that would launch their new time zones.
But their bigger victory was convincing Western Union to transmit this new time from then on. The revolution in timekeeping occurred without a glitch. People who had been used to intuiting time by the position of the sun suddenly saw the railroad’s time on their local clocks.
Because this new time could be almost thirty minutes ahead of or behind the sun, many were uncomfortable, but it was too late to do anything. Since November 18, 1883, no one except farmers — and naturalists — has really needed to pay much attention to the sun, and the sad truth is that fewer and fewer people do.
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