Why Do We Have Time Zones?

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#timezones #geography #socialstudies

A time zone is a region of the Earth where everyone agrees it’s the same time. Also referred to as “local time,” most time zones are exactly one hour apart.
People travel through time all the time thanks to time zones. Yep, just by going west you can go BACK IN TIME. But go too far west and you’re in the future. But don’t worry. Just travel back east and you’ll get back to the past. Oh boy I am already losing many of you.
Now, we’ve been dividing each day into 24 hours going back to, like, the ancient Egyptians. And because most of us still measure how long a day is by hours, the idea is that there would be 24 time zones around the earth, ya know...since the Earth rotates about 15 degrees every hour. After 24 hours, that’s a full rotation of 360 degrees for a full day. So you’d have 24 lunes, or shapes that look like this, all 15 degrees of longitude apart and boom, we all live happily ever after.
But no, that’s not how time zones are shaped. And in fact, there are more than 24 time zones! In fact, as many as 39 time zones?

Now originally there WERE 24 standard time zones that extended from the South Pole to the North Pole, but due to mainly politics and geography, time zones are often very skewed.

First, it’s important to remember that before the invention of the railroad, time zones weren’t really needed. If you traveled before railroads were invented, you traveled by...uh...walking. If you were lucky, you might get to travel by horse, or if you were even luckier you might get to travel by ship. But by the time railroads were more common in the 1830s and into the 1840s, this made travel time way faster and really screwed up communication about what time it was.

But the British had been thinking about this problem long before the railroads came. As they established an empire around the world beginning in the 1600s, some back in London realized they needed to standardize a way of measuring time to help mariners when they were determining longitude when out at sea. So they’d reference wherever they were back to London. It wasn’t until 1721, however, that Great Britain officially created its own prime meridian, or Earth’s zero degrees longitude, passing through their newly established Royal Observatory in Greenwich, a borough in London. Other countries established their own prime meridian, of course, usually passing through THEIR capital cities and yeah they called it different things.

Flash forward to the 1840s, and now we had railroads to worry about. At every railway stop, the local time would be different. That led to railroad companies establishing the first time zones that matched their imaginary prime meridians that ran through their capital cities.

[iammrbeat]

Eat a wad of spinach every time I say the word TIME in this video.
Downloading it helps out my channel out. Now's not the TIME to go into, but it really does.

[patrickmartin]

I’ve experienced a 10 hour flight, from Tokyo to Seattle, where it landed 8 hours before it took off, and thanks to this I have experienced being awake for 32 hours in one day

[rdpag]

I didn't realized how complicated time zones are. We humans make the simplest things very unnecessarily complicated.

[SiVlog]

One of my favourite legacies of the implementation of Time Zones is in the English city of Bristol. At first glance, the clock on the Corn Exchange building is a standard clock with Roman Numerals on its face. However, on closer inspection, there're two minute hands. Before the introduction of a standard time zone in Britain, Bristol was 11 minutes behind London time. The clock on Bristol's Corn Exchange reflects this, one minute hand is on the Official London Time, the other is on Bristol Time.

Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear and latterly Grand Tour fame) said in his program about Isombard Kingdom Brunel, when referring to his railway that ran from London to Bristol:

"[the railway] moved this city forward 100 years and 11 minutes, "

[jaidenamccarroll]

Every TIME I watch a Mr. Beat video, I am satisfied. Thank you for taking the TIME to make these videos.

[SamAronow]

Fun fact: Aharon ben Meir proposed the introduction of time zones in the early 10th century.

[osberswgaming]

I had a great TIME watching this video, now my knowledge on TIME zones has probably increased multiple TIMEs. Thanks for taking the TIME to make this video!

[Compucles]

The need for time standardization is about more than just being able to travel and communicate quickly with far away places. It's also about the increased need to be exact about when things are supposed to happen. As technology and society have advanced, it's become more and more necessary to schedule meetings and other things within a minute or two of everyone's expectations, something that doesn't work if you can only rely on a single large public clock in each individual town, each of which could be set to whatever time the mayor or other public officials preferred. You're right that railroads were a big factor, but it was mostly because people needed to know close to exactly when the trains would be arriving at each station and for the train employees to make sure the trains did indeed arrive at those times.

[KayleeCee]

I got so mixed up on time this last week. I flew down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on October 24th. PVR is in the central standard time zone, and so is my home in the US, so that part was easy. But Mexico turns their clocks back a week earlier than we do in the US, so I went through that time change on the 31st during my visit. I came home on Nov. 4th, which gave me almost enough time to readjust only to have to do the whole thing again on the 7th.

I'll just say that it's a really good thing that my phone and watch change the time automatically, otherwise I wouldn't have had any idea what time it was supposed to be for the last several days.

[revolutionaryape]

I always wait for Friday because of Mr. Beat's cool and knowledgeable videos. Hats off, Mr. Beat!

[bertblankenstein]

Tom Scott does an excellent video of how complicated it is to program/determine the time in the past. You need to know the histories of all the time zones, boundaries, etc, irregularities in the calendar.

[GeneaVlogger]

My first introduction to GMT was when I started getting really into editing Wikipedia.

[SalutExpla]

It's about TIME to watch Mr. Beat's new video!.. hehe

[PuglordGabe]

I know the borders for the time zones are icky, but it makes sense that countries adjust the time zones to match their populated zones and borders. It would be really confusing if the time zones cut through cities and towns and whatnot; you would be in one town and go shopping and end up an hour into the future. I think it’s probably for the best that time zones are weirdly drawn to avoid this.

[allieniner]

I actually like time zones (except for daylight savings time). I live in QLD, Australia and it’s great :)

[heronimousbrapson]

Most time zones are one hour apart. Newfoundland: "What?"

[michaelstanley]

I've always found timezones fascinating. Thanks for adding to my knowledge in this area.

[lukedetering]

I live in the US Central time zone and my cousins are on EST. Always fun when we schedule something as we often forget what time zone we agreed to meet on.

[MicBain]

I'm an art streamer based in Australia, but most of my clients are in the USA and Canada, I'm constantly asking people "what is your GMT timezone?" (so they can watch me create their work live) and nobody ever has any idea what I'm talking about 😆

[KhAnubis]

Huh, I guess Liberia‘s a bit late to adopting quite a few things