{"id":2551,"date":"2014-08-25T14:48:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T18:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/?p=2551"},"modified":"2014-08-25T14:50:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T18:50:50","slug":"adopting-a-single-global-time-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2014\/08\/adopting-a-single-global-time-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Adopting A Single Global Time Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Yglesias argues in favor of abolishing time zones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Time zones are a recent creation. Through most of human history, time was kept locally, based on the solar noon.\u00a0 This worked well enough, as long as most people stayed put.\u00a0 Or if they traveled, traveled slowly.<\/p>\n

But by the mid-1800s, thanks to the railroad and telegraph,\u00a0 people were communicating and traveling much greater distances in a day.\u00a0 Now local time differences were much more noticeable, as this table illustrates:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Comparative<\/a>

Dinsmore (1857) – Dinsmore\u2019s American Railroad and Steam Navigation Guide and Route-Book<\/p><\/div>\n

You can see, for example, that the time in Knoxville, TN, was 12 minutes later than it was in Nashville, TN.<\/p>\n

The table claims this is an “easy calculation,” but it seems like a hassle to me.\u00a0 And it was for the people living then, too.\u00a0 So in 1884 international representatives agreed upon an international system of\u00a0 standardized time based on the Greenwich Meridian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although our current time system is much simpler than before, it still has quirks, as this video amusingly highlights:<\/p>\n