For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston. The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Dowd's system was never accepted by American railroads. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones (having north–south borders), the first centered on Washington, D.C., but by 1872 the first was centered on the meridian 75° W of Greenwich, with geographic borders (for example, sections of the Appalachian Mountains). Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. Some junctions served by several railroads had a clock for each railroad, each showing a different time.Ĭharles F. Each railroad used its own standard time, usually based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, and the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Timekeeping on the American railroads in the mid-19th century was somewhat confused. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time. It was based on the longitude 172☃0′ East of Greenwich, that is 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. On November 2, 1868, the then British colony of New Zealand officially adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony, and was the first country to do so. The problem of differing local times could be solved across larger areas by synchronizing clocks worldwide, but in many places that adopted time would then differ markedly from the solar time to which people were accustomed. Improvements in worldwide communication further increased the need for interacting parties to communicate mutually comprehensible time references to one another. Some British clocks from this period have two minute hands-one for the local time, one for GMT. Even though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880. ![]() About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. This quickly became known as Railway Time. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway (GWR) in November 1840. The first adoption of a standard time was in November 1840, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The use of time zones accumulates these differences into longer units, usually hours, so that nearby places can share a common standard for timekeeping. For example, Bristol, England is about 2.5 degrees west of Greenwich (East London), so when it is solar noon in Bristol, it is about 10 minutes past solar noon in London. ![]() ![]() Local solar time became increasingly inconvenient as rail transport and telecommunications improved, because clocks differed between places by amounts corresponding to the differences in their geographical longitudes, which varied by four minutes of time for every degree of longitude.
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