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16 lis 2009 · 1883. Railroads create the first time zones. At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of...
20 lis 2020 · Defining Moments: How Traveling by Train Ushered in the Era of Time Zones. Confusing table of time and distance for going between different cities in the 1860s.
14 maj 2020 · Railroads spurred this development because they were the first type of transportation that could cover distances in a way that would make time coordination important. Trips went from taking several weeks or even months to taking at most a couple days.
8 kwi 2015 · On November 18, 1883, America’s railroads began using a standard time system involving four time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. Within each zone, all clocks were synchronized.
The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston.
Before the railways became established, it didn't matter that places at different longitudes kept their local time by the Sun. There was no means of transport—or communication over distance—faster than a horse. A few minutes one way or the other between Bristol and Bridgewater was no problem.
The history of standard time in the United States began November 18, 1883, when United States and Canadian railroads instituted standard time in time zones. Before then, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time , maintained by some well-known clock (for example, on a church steeple or in a ...
