US time zones (1857)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference#/media/File:Comparative-time-table.jpg

by craigds • 11 years ago

81 36 11 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Interesting how this relates to the transition of US culture towards "monochronic" time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics

ghaff4• 11 years ago

Based on your reference, I'm not sure that standardized timezones so much transitioned US culture toward a more schedule-oriented environment as allowed it to expand to a larger scale. The banker in a specific city in Indiana with a 2pm meeting probably expected his appointment to show up at a specific time. Time zones made it more practical to schedule things across the country when it became more important to do so.

tvawnz• 11 years ago

Anyone else having difficulty with their example problem? I keep getting 41 minutes difference, not 43.

claar• 11 years ago

That's fantastic.. the "simple" calculation was so simple that the example/explanation contained an error.

InclinedPlane3• 11 years ago

A classic example of adding when one should be subtracting, and the answer is close enough that the error isn't obvious.

The correct answer is 41, which is 12 - 31 + 60

beloch• 11 years ago

While each city and town having their own unique time-zone seems anarchic by today's standards, it actually made sense back then. Real-time interaction with other time zones simply did not happen and travel was an infrequent thing for most people. It made more sense for a time zone to be calculated specifically for a given location. That way high noon was at exactly the same time for any given town and sunrise, sunset, etc were the same for towns at the same latitude, rather than ranging anywhere within an hour (or more in some cases) as they do now. Today's approximate time zones arose as a trade-off between astronomical precision and convenience in a shrinking world.

InclinedPlane3• 11 years ago

In 1900 most Americans died within 5 miles of where they were born. In the 20th century that changed dramatically. The modern world is an immensely different place than the pre-modern world.

eru• 11 years ago

What about all the immigrants?

scarmig• 11 years ago

Your main point is well taken, but I'm skeptical of this particular statistic--is there a source for this? I can't decipher what it means.

Is it that of all the deaths in 1900, over 50% of those occurred within 5 miles of the birthplace of the person dying? Or that 50% of all people who were alive at some point in 1900 died within 5 miles of their birthplace?

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I'm wondering how much of the last thousand years of culture is at risk. It's a new ecosystem without any local maximum. Globalization has value, but cultures too, and right now cultures are mostly 'preserved', they're not really alive, we keep tradition but I don't see new food, new art forms.. Am I wrong ?

Having isolated spaces to create leads to 'biodiversity'.

hellbanner• 11 years ago

Time is kind of like programming. There's an underlying meaning (passage of time, functions) that is agreed upon but a million interpretations on how to implement.

Retra• 11 years ago

That's true of all linguistic constructs.

bdcravens• 11 years ago

I find it telling that that only Texas city listed was Galveston.

ghaff4• 11 years ago

In what way? Prior to the 1900 hurricane, it would have been reasonable to pick Galveston as the pre-eminent city in Texas.

xellisx• 11 years ago

I would have thought Dallas or Fort Worth would have been picked...

ToastyMallows• 11 years ago

Galveston was actually the state capital of the Republic of Texas in the mid 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_state_capitals...

splat• 11 years ago

Interesting, too, that the only California city is Sacramento. This wasn't too long after the gold rush.

madcaptenor• 11 years ago

Also interesting is that there is no city with a reported time between Galveston's (10:49 AM) and Sacramento's (9:02 AM) - settlement essentially skipped over the inland western half of the country.

em3rgent0rdr• 11 years ago

The arguments used by this poster could be used today to argue for the abolishment of timezones in favor of universal adoption of UDT.

ars• 11 years ago

Until people start going to bed based on UTC that's not a realistic thing.

People are OK with modifying bedtime from suntime, for an hour, and probably even a few hours - but not much more than that.

dasil003• 11 years ago

Yeah, once you go to UTC half the world will have two dates for every daylight period, which is just the tip of the iceberg of the practical nightmares which will ensue.

Sometimes software engineers can get tunnel vision about the benefits of a particular reductive paradigm shift.

solotronics• 11 years ago

Time zones are archaic. So many things would be simplified with a one world time.

tempestn• 11 years ago

Simpler isn't always better or easier. When traveling it's a lot easier to change your watch (or more likely, have your phone update automatically) than to re-calibrate your understanding of what times represent morning/lunch/bedtime/etc. Similarly when coordinating meetings or events across timezones, it's much easier to simply see that someone is 3 hours ahead of you than to try to guess roughly what they'll be up to at a given time of day based on their location, without the aid of time zones.

Unless you're suggesting that everyone keep the same hours everywhere. In which case I'm all for it, as long as my side of the world gets to be the one awake in the daytime.

cosss• 11 years ago

I am pretty sure everyone's office hours (to take it as an example) are still going to be fixed at, say, -4 hours back from their noon till +5 hours forward, so instead of saying "UTC+4" people are going to need to learn to say "my noon is at 16:13" (or "16:00" even, i'm pretty sure no one will want to live by any offset from the "global" noon other than those evenly divisible by 30 minutes). Probably abolishing timezones is much less of a profound change than it seems to be.

beedogs• 11 years ago

We have that; it's called UTC.

yread• 11 years ago

Harrisburg, Pa. 12:01

Seriously?! They were one minute ahead of Washington DC.

gpvos• 11 years ago

Yes, why not? They are 200 km apart, coordination would be extra effort while the need for it was small.

rplst8• 11 years ago

In the US you have Samuel Pierpont Langley and the Pennsylvania Railroad to thank for the modern time zone system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time#North_America

scriptedfate• 11 years ago

From "How much is time wrong around the world?"[1] see this map shaded to show the difference between standard time and solar time: http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTime....

You can see that New York is pretty much still considered 'correct' whereas Odessa, TX is rather behind. Egregious examples worldwide include Argentina, most of Saskatchewan, Western China, most of Russia, and Eastern Greenland.

[1] http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-t...

US time zones (1857)

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