Ever wondered why the world isn't synchronized to a single time zone? The concept might seem simple, yet it's intricately tied to our history, geography, and societal norms. Let's delve into the fascinating reasons behind our globally diverse time zones.
Time Zones
For most of human history, time was only measured by placement of the sun, so the sundial dictated what time it was
- Even after people started using mechanical clocks in Europe in the 1300s, the inconsistencies persisted
- Time zones were invented as a way to reduce confusion rather than cause it
How Railways Standardized Time Zones
Confusion about the exact time wasn’t a huge problem until the 1800s, when railroad trains started making it possible to quickly travel from one place to the next.
- Finally, a Scottish-born engineer, Sir Sandford Fleming, devised a system in which the world was divided into 24 time zones, spaced at roughly 15-degree intervals across the planet.
- Eventually, the world adopted Fleming’s system, in which time was based not on the local solar day, but upon how many time zones separated a location from the Royal Greenwich Observatory in the U.K.
Should We All Be on One Time Zone?
The advent of air travel compressed distances even more, and the rise of the internet and mobile devices enabled instantaneous communication between people all over the planet and gave us a 24-7 culture in which we’re tightly interconnected to events in distant places.
- Hanke and his colleague, Johns Hopkins University professor of physics and astronomy Richard Conn Henry, propose an even simpler solution: do away with time zones completely and put the entire world on universal time (UTC).
- In addition to making it easier to adjust to travel, having one time across the planet would make it easier for people who need to, say, set up conference calls with groups of individuals scattered from Montana to Germany.
