Time zones america how to#

The Royal Observatory transmitted its first telegraph signal for setting clocks on August 23, 1852, and by the mid-1850s, most public clocks in Britain were set to GMT. In 1847, the Railway Clearing House recommended switching to GMT. In 1840, the Great Western Railway became the first to adopt London time, and most railroads soon followed suit. How Railroads Created Time ZonesĮngland’s railroads also needed standardization for their timetables. Each town in England, however, continued to set its own clocks by the sun. In 1764, John Harrison perfected the use of clocks to determine a ship’s east-west position at sea. The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, established Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in 1675 as an aid to mariners in determining longitude. This inconsistency was the impetus for standardization, made possible by the telegraph.Īnother mode of transportation-the sailing ship-inspired the earliest efforts to standardize time. The railroads had been struggling with 100 different local time zones of their own devising. 18, 1883-the “day with two noons”-most places in the continental United States adopted the system of four time zones originally known as Standard Railway Time. When your clocks “spring forward” or “fall back” with Daylight Saving Time, take a moment to observe the birthday of America’s standard time zones. “Sun time” differs by four minutes for every degree of longitude, making New York and Boston eight minutes apart. Estimates of the number of these local “time zones” range from 300 to 8,000 across the United States alone. ( Wikimedia Commons)ĭoes anybody really know what time it is? For our ancestors, the answer depended on where they were, with each town’s official clock-typically on a church or city hall-set by the sun, which would be overhead at noon each day. This map shows the railroads’ time zones five years earlier, in 1913. The Standard Time Act in 1918 formally established four US time zones.

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Time zones america how to#

How to Find Your Ancestor’s US Military Records.Color the bodies of water light blue, color your state red, color the rest of the USA orange, color Canada yellow, and color Mexico green.Label the Atlantic Ocean (east of the USA), the Pacific Ocean (west of the USA), and the Gulf of Mexico (bordering the southeastern USA and eastern Mexico).Label Canada (the country north of the USA) and Mexico (the country south of the USA).Find the state you live in and label it (write out its name).If it is 12:00 in Central time, label the time in all the other time zones.The contiguous US time zones are one hour apart for example, if it is 1:00 in Pacific Time, it is 2:00 in Mountain time, 3:00 in Central time, and 4:00 in Eastern time. Label the four contiguous US time zones: Eastern (the eastern US), Central (just west of the eastern time zone), Mountain (between Central and Pacific), and Pacific (the far-western US).Note: the Alaska and Hawaii time zones are not pictured on the map above. Most US states (except Hawaii and most of Indiana and Arizona) go on daylight saving time (DST) from April until October to save energy (in DST, clocks are set forward one hour).

The contiguous US is divided into four time zones. Time zones were first used in 1883 by railroads in order to standardize their schedules.

The Earth is divided into 24 time zones so that everyone in the world can be on roughly similar schedules (like noon being when the sun is highest in the sky). Our subscribers' grade-level estimate for this page: Today's featured page: Musical Instruments Tiny Picture Dictionary - A Short Book to Print United States of America - Follow the Instructions #4 is a user-supported site.Īs a bonus, site members have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site, with print-friendly pages.