Clocks A–Z · R

Railroad Time and the Birth of Time Zones

Every town once kept its own time. Railways made that impossible, and in fixing it they gave the world standard time.

By David Ray · clocks.fyi

A different time in every town

Before the railways, each town kept its own local time based on the sun. Royal Museums Greenwich notes that local time in Plymouth was about 16 and a half minutes behind Greenwich, and Liverpool's was 12 minutes behind.

When people traveled by horse, those differences hardly mattered. But the Science Museum Group points out that railways sharing a complex network needed carefully managed timetables to avoid serious accidents, and a patchwork of local times made that inconvenient and even dangerous.

Royal Museums Greenwich gives a vivid example of the muddle. A traveler going from Liverpool to Paris had to set a watch forward 7 minutes 34 seconds on reaching Portsmouth, another 10 minutes at Boulogne and a further 2 minutes 55 seconds on arrival in Paris.

North America had it worse. The plaque in Chicago marking the 1883 reform says more than 100 different local times were in use across the United States.

Railway time in Britain

Early British railways juggled several times at once. Royal Museums Greenwich describes how the North Western Railway's trains ran on Liverpool time going down to London and on London time coming back, while each station along the way kept its own local time.

The Great Western Railway was the first to standardize, but the exact date depends on the source. Network Rail says that in November 1840 the GWR told all its stations to use London time, and that a GWR timetable of 1841 stated that London time was kept at every station. The Science Museum Group dates the GWR's announcement that it would observe railway time to November 1841.

Others followed. Henry Booth, secretary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, campaigned for a standard time across Britain, the Science Museum Group notes, and in 1847 the Railway Clearing House recommended that every railway adopt railway time. The network was growing fast: Royal Museums Greenwich says 27 new railway lines opened in 1847 alone.

Not everyone welcomed it. Royal Museums Greenwich records that some people in the east and west of the country protested against what they called railway-time aggression, and the Science Museum Group says Exeter did not adopt the standard until November 1852.

Want the exact time right now? See it on a big, clean clock at OnlineClock.app, free, with no sign-up.

Telegraph wires and the law

The telegraph made a shared time practical. From 1852, Royal Museums Greenwich explains, Astronomer Royal George Airy sent electrical time signals from the Royal Observatory, and until 1893 an electric clock there was the heart of Britain's time system, its signal carried by telegraph to London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast and many other cities.

No law forced towns to follow at first, yet the change spread quickly. The Science Museum Group estimates that by 1855, 98 percent of public clocks in Great Britain and Ireland showed Greenwich Mean Time. Parliament caught up in 1880, when Greenwich Mean Time became the legal time in Great Britain.

Clockmakers advertised the new standard on the dial itself. The Science Museum Group holds an octagonal wall clock signed "W. Avison, Railway Time, York", made by William Avison sometime between 1840 and 1880, a sign of how familiar the phrase had become.

See also: what UTC is and how it relates to GMT on OnlineClock.app.

North America's General Time Convention

With so many local times, writing railroad timetables was a headache. A 1983 history in the Christian Science Monitor notes that Connecticut alone had five different times in use.

The railroads' answer came from the General Time Convention, a railroad association, which the Monitor says began drawing up a new system in 1881. Its leader, William F. Allen, toured the country lobbying local politicians.

The plan was adopted on 11 October 1883 at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago, according to the plaque that now marks the site. It set up four equal time zones across the United States, each an hour ahead of the zone to its west.

Sources count the zones differently because they cover different areas. The Chicago plaque describes four zones across the US. The Monitor describes five across the continent, naming an Intercolonial zone for eastern Canada alongside Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific.

The Day of Two Noons

The switch came on Sunday, 18 November 1883. According to the Chicago plaque, the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh sent a telegraph signal when it was exactly noon on the 90th meridian, and railroad clocks were reset to match. Wherever local clocks had been running ahead of the new standard, they had to be turned back after noon, so those places met noon twice.

The Monitor stresses that most North American railroads made the switch voluntarily. Towns could follow or not, and a few resented the railroads imposing their time on everyone. Even so, within a year 85 percent of towns with more than 10,000 people had adopted standard time, the Monitor reports.

The federal government took much longer. Congress formally recognized the zones only when it passed the Standard Time Act on 19 March 1918, according to the Chicago plaque.

Sandford Fleming and a world of zones

Railroads also shaped the global system. Sandford Fleming, a Scottish-born Canadian engineer born on 7 January 1827, designed Canada's first postage stamp, the Three-penny Beaver of 1851, and was involved in building the Canadian Pacific Railway, according to the Linda Hall Library.

In 1879 Fleming proposed standard time zones as the answer to the confusion. He found little support in Canada but more in the United States. The American Society of Civil Engineers made him chairman of its Special Committee on Standard Time, and its 1884 report, signed by Fleming, urged a system of 24 time zones. It even came with tiny printed labels showing the hours 13 to 24 that owners could paste onto their watch faces.

In October 1884 the International Meridian Conference met in Washington, D.C., and chose the Greenwich meridian as the world's prime meridian. Fleming attended, representing Canada for Great Britain. But the Linda Hall Library notes that the conference did not adopt his 24-hour proposal, judging that an international meeting should not decide how communities keep local time.

His idea won anyway. The Linda Hall Library says that within about 40 years, most countries had set up time zones very much like the ones Fleming had recommended.

See also: how the world's time zones fit together on OnlineClock.app.

See also: reading the 24-hour clock on OnlineClock.app.

Questions people ask

What was railway time?

The use of one standard time, London or Greenwich time, across a railway network instead of each town's local solar time. Network Rail dates the Great Western Railway's switch to November 1840, while the Science Museum Group gives November 1841.

When did the US adopt time zones?

The railroads switched to standard zones on 18 November 1883. Federal law recognized them in the Standard Time Act of 19 March 1918.

Were there four or five zones in 1883?

Four across the United States, according to the Chicago plaque marking the plan's adoption. Accounts covering the whole continent count five, adding an Intercolonial zone for eastern Canada.

Who invented time zones?

Several people contributed. William F. Allen led the railroads' plan adopted in North America in 1883, and Sandford Fleming proposed standard time zones in 1879 and pushed for a worldwide system of 24.

Keep exploring

GThe Grand Central Terminal Information Booth ClockNew Yorkers have been meeting under it for more than a century. Its faces are not opal, and they are probably …HJohn Harrison and the Marine ChronometerA carpenter from northern England spent most of his life building clocks that could keep time on a rolling shi…TTower and Turret ClocksLong before most people owned a timepiece, a clock high in a church or town tower told a whole community when …BBig Ben and the Great Clock of WestminsterStrictly speaking, Big Ben is a bell of about 13.7 tonnes. The clock below it and the tower around it have sto…XWhy Clocks Show 12 HoursThe numbers on an ordinary clock face are a 3,500-year-old inheritance from Egyptian astronomers, Babylonian m…