U.S. Time Zones Created

[Nitro]

November 18, 1883
As of 11:59 a.m. on November 18, 1883, U.S. railroad schedules kept track of more than 300 local time zones determined by each town’s specific “solar noon.” But at 12:01 p.m. that same day, that number shrank to just four, as trains officially began running on a new, standardized schedule. These new time zones — called Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific — were determined by calculating the “solar noon” of the closest meridian. Meridians are longitudinal lines separated by 15 degrees that divide the globe into 24 sections, four of which cover the continental United States.

While railroads were the instigating economic force behind the change, astronomers and meteorologists had argued for standardized time zones for years. In 1875, the first head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, Cleveland Abbe, pushed the American Meteorological Society for standardized time zones, and the resulting report became the blueprint for the railroads’ own plan. Recognizing this obvious temporal convenience, cities and states soon adopted what was called “railroad time,” and in 1918, the U.S. government followed suit by passing the Standard Time Act. While defining an additional U.S. time zone (Alaska Time), the act also introduced Daylight Saving Time. Today, hundreds of millions of Americans still change their clocks twice a year.

 

[Unclewolverine]

Time zones are useful and all but let's please get rid of daylight savings time!

 

[WildCat]

It's always nice to get that extra hour of sleep in the fall...only to lose it again in the spring.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Daylight savings isn’t necessary anymore unless you are Amish or live in one of those communes that refuses to use technology. Daylight savings was originally created to make candles last longer but no one uses candles for lighting at night anymore.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

It is luxurious in the summer to live both at the western edge of a time zone and at 45 degrees North. The long twilight evenings are wonderfully enchanting.

 

[oregano]

Before 18/11/1883, a town would set their clocks and watches to the time determined by the local jeweler, who was the guy you would go see if you needed a new clock or watch, or to have your existing one repaired. He had a big pedestal clock outside his establishment, which told the time, and the citizenry would set their timepieces by this big clock. Since travel before railroads was by foot, horse, or ox/wagon, this sufficed. With the advent of railroads, suddenly travel got a LOT easier, and also as suddenly the town jeweler's clock became obsolete. The need for uniform time became a lot greater. Considering the power that railroads had in Gilded Age America-they were largely controlled by financier John P. Morgan (whose investment house still exists as JPMorgan Chase), who was the big kahuna among the country's moneyed elite-a time standardization law was inevitable. Officially, current American time standards are regulated by the Uniform Time Act of 1966.

This is a stock photo of one of the last of these "jeweler's clocks" in California, if not the entire country: the Fred Mayes Clock in Sacramento, California.

This gives you a good idea of the typical Victorian sidewalk pedestal clock, albeit with an updated clock face. (Fred Mayes went out of business around 2000.) The block this clock is located on is slated for demolition for a 25 story skyscraper, and the clock's fate is uncertain.

 

[clg114]

I have always liked daylight savings time because it gave me an extra hour to go riding, or golfing, or fishing, or whatever every day. My wife liked it because it got me out of her hair for an extra hour every day. Our kids liked it because it gave them a extra hour of summer vacation every day. We all liked it because it gave us an extra hour to do things together, outside every day.

 

[Suzette]

Interesting article with details about daylight savings time origins and what life would be like on eith fulltime daylight or standard time.
Make daylight saving time permanent? Get rid of it? Here’s what life would be like if we didn’t spring forward or fall back

Since we live in Sonora Mexico we share time standards with Arizona. Our time never changes but the time zone we match does. Arizona and Sonora are always on Mountain Standard time. But being farther south we always have about 40 minutes more daylight than Denver regardless of the time of year.

 

[Au Naturel]

We should all just use GMT, use a 24-hour clock, and be done with it. Just like we should bite the bullet and go metric.

 

[Nitro]

Yeah, we should bite the bullet and go metric, but it's not as simple as you might want to think it is.
One of the first thing that will happen is rendering machinetools set up specifically for Imperial measurements obsolete.
All of the measuring dials and gear boxes are specific to the imperial system and most of the gearboxes can only approximate a metric thread, while forcing tons of people out of work who will be forced to learn a new system or do a lot of unnecessary math to compensate for the conversions from one system to the other.
I personally own and use several examples from over 50 years ago because they were made in an era when casting iron happened pretty much everywhere in our country.
Now with strict environmental concerns and stricter regulations on doing so, cast iron products basically come right out of China where they have zero concerns for the environment and because of the BS activities that occur on Wall Street, the demand for quality has been over-ridden by cost cutting measures that are generally manifested as very inferior product to the end user.

Oops, no more jobs for many, and who the hell knows how much slave or child labor this will required offshore
I seriously can't wait to run junk machines with little to no quality control made by little kids, but then again, I guess I will have to just simply bite the bullet and go there.
Then mega tons of tools will be rendered as junk plus all of the present tooling will have to be scrapped.
No biggie right, China will come to the rescue.
Then we can once again bite the bullet and just wholesale start scrapping pretty much anything left over from our old and stupid past.
Want to buy a "fine quality" Chinese built Grizzly lathe?
I have an almost new one available for purchase that I got in a horsetrade that had to be dismantled to correct as many errors as possible just to render it useful.
It has tons of inferior plastic gears inside of the drive and is about as accurately machined as if it was done with a hammer and chisel.
The only guarantee I can offer you with it is that I will help you load it just to get it out of here, because I consider it scrap.
Grizzly did in fact buy up South Bend, a once trusted machinetool manufacturer from Indiana, so I can only imagine that they are all now made offshore too, but that's cool, because we all have to bite that bullet sometime, right?

Now let's address the 24 hour clock based on GMT.
It makes perfectly good sense to some who are navigating globally, but once again, it will render timepieces around the world obsolete with the stroke of a pen then add a bigger load to manufacturing which once again will be passed off to places outside of most countries.

If globalization is the answer to making stuff "better", then I'm glad that that I'm on the way out instead of on the way in

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Yeah, we should bite the bullet and go metric, but it's not as simple as you might want to think it is.
One of the first thing that will happen is rendering machinetools set up for specifically for Imperial measurements obsolete.
All of the measuring dials and gear boxes are specific to the imperial system and most of the gearboxes can only approximate a metric thread, while forcing tons of people out of work who will be forced to learn a new system or do a lot of unnecessary math to compensate for the conversions from one system to the other.
I personally own and use several examples from over 50 years ago because they were made in an era when casting iron happened pretty much everywhere in our country.
Now with strict environmental concerns and stricter regulations on doing so, cast iron products basically come right out of China where they have zero concerns for the environment and because of the BS activities that occur on Wall Street, the demand for quality has been over-ridden by cost cutting measures that are generally manifested as very inferior product to the end user.

Oops, no more jobs for many, and who the hell knows how much slave or child labor this will require offshore
I seriously can't wait to run junk machines with little to no quality control made by little kids, but then again, I guess I will have to just simply bite the bullet and go there.
Then mega tons of tools will be rendered as junk plus all of the present tooling will have to be scrapped.
No biggie right, China will come to the rescue.
Then we can once again bite the bullet and just wholesale start scrapping pretty much anything left over from our old and stupid past.
Want to buy a "fine quality" Chinese built Grizzly lathe?
I have an almost new one available for purchase that I got in a horsetrade that had to be dismantled to correct as many errors as possible just to render it useful.
It has tons of inferior plastic gears inside of the drive and is about as accurately machined as if it was done with a hammer and chisel.
The only guarantee I can offer you with it is that I will help you load it just to get it out of here, because I consider it scrap.
Grizzly did in fact buy up South Bend, a once trusted machinetool manufacturer from Indiana, so I can only imagine that they are all now made offshore too, but that's cool, because we all have to bite that bullet sometime, right?

Now let's address the 24 hour clock based on GMT.
It makes perfectly good sense to some who are navigating globally, but once again, it will render timepieces around the world obsolete with the stroke of a pen then add a bigger load to manufacturing which once again will be passed off to places outside of most countries.

If globalization is the answer to making stuff "better", then I'm glad that that I'm on the way out instead of on the way in

I hear ya. I actually like manufacturing, and a reason that on top of everything I learned Quality Engineering. In my lifetime I have seen the USA go from the leader in machine tools, the basis of manufacturing, to a has-been, not even in the top 10. Interesting how the MBA and Wall Street crowd has crippled America's manufacturing capability. And, watching China's military build up, we have America's consumers to thank for that. Maybe their children will fight that war they made possible with their spending.

 

[aspie1w]

Nitro with all my respect, if United States switched to Metric system is not that serious because could use for domestic user either of both , in sciences like medical sciences already is used metric and other areas of science, in countries where is metric system can coexist the imperial and metric system in certain areas of sciences, i tell this because my dad was mechanic and him worked with both systems as serviced american and british vehicles as european ones also, i tried to study also mechanics and they teach to you both systems because you can service cars that has parts that uses metric or imperial system. would be troubles with incorporate new machines or calibration of machines to use both systems but today machines are universal and comes with both systems in it except certain specific , as for an example where i live we use metric system but the pipes the common sizes are specified in inches and the televisions screen sizes too and not in meters or centimeters.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Nitro with all my respect, if United States switched to Metric system is not that serious because could use for domestic user either of both , in sciences like medical sciences already is used metric and other areas of science, in countries where is metric system can coexist the imperial and metric system in certain areas of sciences, i tell this because my dad was mechanic and him worked with both systems as serviced american and british vehicles as european ones also, i tried to study also mechanics and they teach to you both systems because you can service cars that has parts that uses metric or imperial system. would be troubles with incorporate new machines or calibration of machines to use both systems but today machines are universal and comes with both systems in it except certain specific , as for an example where i live we use metric system but the pipes the common sizes are specified in inches and the televisions screen sizes too and not in meters or centimeters.

. All my tools are both metric and English. I worked in chemistry, Metric, and paint application, Some metric some English does not matter to me.

 

[Nitro]

Nitro with all my respect, if United States switched to Metric system is not that serious because could use for domestic user either of both , in sciences like medical sciences already is used metric and other areas of science, in countries where is metric system can coexist the imperial and metric system in certain areas of sciences, i tell this because my dad was mechanic and him worked with both systems as serviced american and british vehicles as european ones also, i tried to study also mechanics and they teach to you both systems because you can service cars that has parts that uses metric or imperial system. would be troubles with incorporate new machines or calibration of machines to use both systems but today machines are universal and comes with both systems in it except certain specific , as for an example where i live we use metric system but the pipes the common sizes are specified in inches and the televisions screen sizes too and not in meters or centimeters.

It's not about the co-existence of the two at all.
Yes they can co-exist and already do.
I really don't see it happening across the board for most of the reasons I already specified.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I hear ya. I actually like manufacturing, and a reason that on top of everything I learned Quality Engineering. In my lifetime I have seen the USA go from the leader in machine tools, the basis of manufacturing, to a has-been, not even in the top 10. Interesting how the MBA and Wall Street crowd has crippled America's manufacturing capability. And, watching China's military build up, we have America's consumers to thank for that. Maybe their children will fight that war they made possible with their spending.

I quess we were cut from the same cloth, Did quality engineering for similar reasons as you.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I managed doing it in Pharma, in a highly regulated manufacturing environment. How better to demonstrate that the processes are consistently working as intended?

Have you seen the documentary, "Downfall; the case against Boeing"? The parts where the McDonald Douglas administration killed quality accountability had me nearly screaming at the TV. Greed took a great engineering company that built planes and flew it into terrain.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

We transitioned to Metric 40 years ago, up here in Canada, was relatively painless. Becoming bi lingual was easy, with a chemistry back ground. Physics A bit different. only time I ever used Gallons was weight per gallon with paint or mg per foot squared on coating weight on treatment. two sets of tools.

Watched that documentary a few days ago. No flying on 737 for me.