![]() But, as the example of Boston shows, some of us pay a price when it comes to afternoon sunshine. The transition went smoothly, and today it’s hard to imagine a world where the time zone could change every few miles. The contiguous US has 4 standard time zones. However, adding the time zones of 2 uninhabited US territories, Howland Island and Baker Island, brings the total count to 11 time zones. Within months, many cities across the country agreed to officially adopt “railroad time.” There are 9 time zones by law in the USA and its dependencies. In 1883, a convention of railway companies adopted the system of time zones we know today. The notion of adopting standard time zones also got a boost from scientists, who wanted to make it easier to compare astronomic observations with colleagues in different cities, and who acted as thought leaders promoting standardized times. The Connecticut experiment was so successful that railroads across the country saw the wisdom in following suit. Central Time Zone (Zone S), which comprises roughly the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Valley, and most of the Great Plains. The following year, the entire state agreed to use that same time standard. From east to west, the four time zones of the contiguous United States are: Eastern Time Zone (Zone R), which comprises roughly the states on the Atlantic coast and the eastern two thirds of the Ohio Valley. But, in 1880, Connecticut’s railways began leading the way, adopting New York City time. Given the large number of railroad companies in the country, setting up a system was not a simple matter. In the geographically sprawling U.S., it was clear that there would need to be more than one time zone. To solve the problem, Americans looked to England, where the railroads had established a standard time, set at Greenwich Observatory, to use across the entire country. In the extreme case of Pittsburgh, trains used six different time standards for arrivals and departures. Deel clients pay an average annual salary of about 74,400 across Latin America for full-time and contract-based workers in areas including engineering and product design. Some train stations had multiple clocks on the walls showing the local times in various nearby cities. The railroads not only brought cities closer together, they also demanded precise timekeeping. People who would once have had to spend weeks traveling from Boston to Washington could now make the trip in less than a day. Some states like Alabama belong to Eastern and Central time zones. Between 1830 and the end of the Civil War, the country’s railroad tracks grew from 23 to 35,000 miles. States in the eastern time zone include Main, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. That was a perfectly fine system if you didn’t have to coordinate a conference call with colleagues in another city or tune in to the Super Bowl at the right time-neither of which were an issue before the invention of the radio or telephone.īut another innovation was rapidly connecting cities together. Tiring of 4 pm sunsets, Boston is considering a move to the Atlantic Time Zone.
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