Interestingly, many French maps showed zero degrees in Paris for many years despite the International Meridian Conference’s outcomes in 1884. Is the prime meridian in the wrong place? Time Zones in the 20th Century The Greenwich Observatory produced data of the highest quality for a long time.The British Nautical Almanac started these charts in 1767. Britain had more shipping and ships using the Greenwich Meridian than the rest of the world put together (at the time).The main factors that favored Greenwich as the site of the prime meridian were: The international 24-hour time-zone system grew from this, in which all zones referred back to GMT on the prime meridian. The conference established the Greenwich Meridian as the prime meridian and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the world’s time standard. The proposal stated that the prime meridian for longitude and timekeeping should be one that passes through the center of the transit instrument at the Greenwich Observatory in the United Kingdom (UK). The International Meridian Conference in Washington DC, USA, adopted a proposal in October 1884. He also helped convene the International Meridian Conference in 1884, where the international standard time system was adopted. He advocated the adoption of a standard or mean time and hourly variations from that following established time zones. Sir Sandford Fleming was one of the key players in developing a satisfactory worldwide system of keeping time. Many people informally recognized the Greenwich Meridian as the prime meridian before the International Meridian Conference in 1884. Moreover, the shipping industry would benefit from having just one prime meridian. The Greenwich Observatory's reputation for the reliability and accuracy in publications of its navigational data was one factor that contributed to the Greenwich Meridian’s popularity. Various meridians were used for longitudinal references among different countries before the late 1800s, and the Greenwich Meridian was the most popular of these.

One Prime Meridianīritain, which already adopted its own standard time system for England, Scotland, and Wales, helped gather international consensus for global time zones in 1884. Four standard time zones for the continental United States were introduced on November 18, 1883. Operators of the new railroad lines needed a new time plan that would offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals. Railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem. Every city in the United States used a different time standard, so there were more than 300 local sun-times to choose from. Time calculation became a serious problem for people traveling by train (sometimes hundreds of miles in a day), according to the Library of Congress. Each train station set its own clock making it difficult to coordinate train schedules and confusing passengers. 19th Century ChallengesĪmerican railroads maintained many different time zones during the late 1800s. Time zones were, therefore, a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to be approximate with mean solar time. The use of local solar time became increasingly awkward as railways and telecommunications improved.

Dawn and dusk occur at different times, but time differences between distant locations were barely noticeable before the 19th century because of long travel times and the lack of long-distance communications. Clocks Based on the SunĮven after the chronometer many towns and cities set clocks based on sunsets and sunrises. Chronometers measured time accurately in spite of motion or varying conditions, and became popular instruments among many merchant mariners during the 19th century. However, these clocks were not sufficiently accurate to be used at sea to determine longitude and for scientific time measurement in the 18th century. The pendulum clock was developed during the 17th century. The earliest time measuring devices we know of are sundials and water clocks.

The expansion of transport and communication during the 19th century created a need for a unified time-keeping system.īefore clocks were invented, people kept time using different instruments to observe the Sun’s meridian passing at noon.

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When were clocks invented