How Trains Stole Local Time

Not just the origin of time zones but also the realization that they are something that were actually created at some point struck me. Just like other human concepts, civilization made do without them for thousands of years. So yes, time zones are a relatively recent creation. Before people were able to move at higher speeds over longer distances there was no getting away from the basic structure of the day. Noon was when the sun was at its highest and even a very fast horse could not take you far enough fast enough for that moment to move by very much. Every region or major town having its own time "zone" impacted no one in any meaningful way.

That changed completely when the railway system in the UK gained in popularity. All those cities and towns keeping their own individual "official" times created planning chaos at best and deadly risks at worst. Especially for trains using a single track, not fully aligning on whose 10:30 you are organizing your train ride on could lead to major collisions. In 1947 the British railway companies all adopted a single standard "Railway Time" which was later adopted nationwide as the Greenwich Mean Time. The entire country now had, for the very first time (pun intended), the same time everywhere.

Those of you who have traveled in both know that the scale of the US and the UK are vastly different. Adopting one centralized time for a continent sized country would lead to a huge discrepancy between "anthropologic" time, agreed upon by humans, and the actual time of the day based on the sun. Imagine the capital of the country being taken as the determining factor to define time. You would be having breakfast "at noon" in San-Francisco. Again it was the railways guys that settled upon the four time zones that are currently in use: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. So next time you are road tripping in the US, can't imagine you would use the train, remember those early pioneers.