Who Decides On the Time Zones?

Everything in life is dictated by time, and depending on where you live, your time is totally different than somebody someplace else. This hasn’t always been the case. How then was it determined how our time was divided up?

The origins of time zones may be traced to at least one particular change in transportation–the rise of the railroads. In the late 1800s, when trains turned the wantred means of travel across the US, a problem surfaced. Passengers wanted to catch their train at a selected time of their a part of the country, and trains wanted a set time so that they wouldn’t crash into each other.

Towns often set their native time by the sun’s movement, so when trains began to cut the travel time between these towns, the time between these areas was vastly different. The railroads had to have totally different arrival and departure instances for various trains depending on the native time where the train was coming or going. It grew to become a scheduling mess, and a better way was needed.

The railroads were the primary to develop a time zone system in 1883 instead of counting on the federal government. They established four zones throughout the country; the Eastern, Central, Western, and Pacific. These zones are carefully aligned with the zones we've got today. It wasn’t till 1918 that these time zones turned official under the Normal Time Act. This was additionally when daylight saving time was established.

A yr after the railroads set their time zones, delegates from 25 countries met in Washington DC to establish time zones worldwide and throughout completely different countries. They set the standard starting level (the Prime Meridian) on the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. With every 15 degrees lengthyitude change, the time changed by one hour. Going east an hour was gained, and by touring west an hour was decreased. The outcome was 24 time zones that covered your complete world.

The selection of Greenwich as the Prime Meridian was because of its fashionableity, even though different international locations had been utilizing other longitude reference points. The observatory had a record of accurate and reliable navigation data used within the shipping business, and Britain had more ships and shipping visitors than the rest of the world combined at that time. It wasn’t wholly adopted by each country right away, however. The French used Paris as their Prime Meridian until 1911.

So who in the end decides what the time zones are? It’s really decided by particular person countries. While many countries adopted the hourly time zones, there were nonetheless many variations as totally different nations decided on half or quarter-hour deviations from these zones.

Many international locations have modified their time zones to fit their needs. In 1949, China’s communist government moved the country’s five time zones into one. The time for all the country was based mostly on the time in Beijing, and the reason was to ascertain national unity. There are other oddities with time zones across the world. In the summertime, Australia has not only vertical time zones like we are familiar with however horizontal ones as well, and Russia truly covers twelve time zones but only acknowledges 9 of them.

The present time zones are removed from uniform, and lots of other strange time zones crop up because of daylight saving time. This would require a completely separate discussion.

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