Importance of time zones
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Time zones were developed when it became necessary for people to be able to have things happen on time. For example, in the US, preparing railroad timetables was a nightmare when each town calculated its own daily clock based on when the sun was directly overhead at "noon."
A train would leave Centerville on Centerville time and arrive in Westwood, 100 miles away, on Westwood time. The telegraph operators who were communicating between the stations were confused, to say the least: "The train just left here at 12:15." "Okay, what time will it get here?" "It travels 50 miles an hour, it's 100 miles, so it will get there at 2:15." "2:15? That's 2 and 1/2 hours from now." "What time is it there?" "It's 11:45." "Well, it's 12:15 here, and the train will be there in 2 hours." Going the other way it was even worse.
Now that we frequently travel and ship goods by air, it's critically important to know when to be at the airport and when to have people meet you at the other end of the trip, so having a standard time is important. Then too, people like to have certain times occur at certain periods of the day, so "noon" is close to 12:00 and "midnight" is at 24:00 or 12:00 p.m., even in places where it is not dark at that hour.
Time zones are arbitrary, so they do not coincide exactly with the agreed-upon longitudes. However, they follow the same means of dividing the world into 24 segments, each with roughly uniform time within the segment. There's also an imaginary starting point that passes through the least-inhabited part of the Pacific Ocean that is the International Date Line. Each day starts there and moves with the sun to the west.
A train would leave Centerville on Centerville time and arrive in Westwood, 100 miles away, on Westwood time. The telegraph operators who were communicating between the stations were confused, to say the least: "The train just left here at 12:15." "Okay, what time will it get here?" "It travels 50 miles an hour, it's 100 miles, so it will get there at 2:15." "2:15? That's 2 and 1/2 hours from now." "What time is it there?" "It's 11:45." "Well, it's 12:15 here, and the train will be there in 2 hours." Going the other way it was even worse.
Now that we frequently travel and ship goods by air, it's critically important to know when to be at the airport and when to have people meet you at the other end of the trip, so having a standard time is important. Then too, people like to have certain times occur at certain periods of the day, so "noon" is close to 12:00 and "midnight" is at 24:00 or 12:00 p.m., even in places where it is not dark at that hour.
Time zones are arbitrary, so they do not coincide exactly with the agreed-upon longitudes. However, they follow the same means of dividing the world into 24 segments, each with roughly uniform time within the segment. There's also an imaginary starting point that passes through the least-inhabited part of the Pacific Ocean that is the International Date Line. Each day starts there and moves with the sun to the west.
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