During the 19th century, scheduled steamships and trains required time standardisation in the industrialized world.
Great Britain A standardised time system was first used by British railways on 1 December 1847, when they switched from local mean time, which varied from place to place, to
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). It was also given the name
railway time, reflecting the important role the railway companies played in bringing it about. The vast majority of Great Britain's public clocks were standardised to GMT by 1855.
North America Until 1883, each United States railroad chose its own time standards. The
Pennsylvania Railroad used the "Allegheny Time" system, an astronomical timekeeping service which had been developed by
Samuel Pierpont Langley at the
University of Pittsburgh's
Allegheny Observatory (then known as the
Western University of Pennsylvania, located in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Instituted in 1869, the Allegheny Observatory's service is believed to have been the first regular and systematic system of time distribution to railroads and cities as well as the origin of the modern standard time system. By 1870 the Allegheny Time service extended over 2,500 miles with 300 telegraph offices receiving time signals. However, almost all railroads out of New York ran on New York time, and railroads west from Chicago mostly used Chicago time, but between Chicago and Pittsburgh/Buffalo the norm was Columbus time, even on railroads such as the PFtW&C and
LS&MS, which did not run through Columbus. The
Santa Fe Railroad used
Jefferson City (Missouri) time all the way to its west end at
Deming, New Mexico, as did the east–west lines across Texas; Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads used San Francisco time all the way to
El Paso. The
Northern Pacific Railroad had seven time zones between St. Paul and the 1883 west end of the railroad at
Wallula Jct; the Union Pacific Railway was at the other extreme, with only two time zones between
Omaha and Ogden. In 1870,
Charles F. Dowd proposed four time zones based on the
meridian through
Washington, DC, for North American railroads. In 1872 he revised his proposal to base it on the
Greenwich meridian.
Sandford Fleming, a Scottish-born Canadian engineer, proposed worldwide Standard Time at a meeting of the
Royal Canadian Institute on February 8, 1879.
Cleveland Abbe advocated standard time to better coordinate international weather observations and resultant
weather forecasts, which had been coordinated using local
solar time. In 1879 he recommended four time zones across the
contiguous United States, based upon
Greenwich Mean Time. The General Time Convention (renamed the
American Railway Association in 1891), an organization of US railroads charged with coordinating schedules and operating standards, became increasingly concerned that if the US government adopted a standard time scheme it would be disadvantageous to its member railroads. William F. Allen, the Convention secretary, argued that North American railroads should adopt a five-zone standard, similar to the one in use today, to avoid government action. On October 11, 1883, the heads of the major railroads met in
Chicago at the
Grand Pacific Hotel and agreed to adopt Allen's proposed system. The members agreed that on Sunday, November 18, 1883, all United States and Canadian railroads would readjust their clocks and watches to reflect the new five-zone system on a telegraph signal from the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh at exactly noon on the 90th meridian. Although most railroads adopted the new system as scheduled, some did so early on October 7 and others late on December 2. The
Intercolonial Railway serving the Canadian maritime provinces of
New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia just east of
Maine decided not to adopt Intercolonial Time based on the 60th meridian west of Greenwich, instead adopting Eastern Time, so only four time zones were actually adopted by American and Canadian railroads in 1883. In 2007 the US enacted a federal law formalising the use of
Coordinated Universal Time as the basis of standard time, and the role of the
Secretary of Commerce (effectively, the
National Institute of Standards and Technology) and the
Secretary of the Navy (effectively, the
US Naval Observatory) in interpreting standard time. In 1999, standard time was inducted into the
North America Railway Hall of Fame in the category "National: Technical Innovations." The
Dominion of Newfoundland, whose capital St. John's falls almost exactly midway between the meridians anchoring the
Atlantic Time Zone and the
Greenland Time Zone, voted in 1935 to create a half-hour offset time zone known as the
Newfoundland Time Zone, at three and a half hours behind Greenwich time.
The Netherlands In the Netherlands, introduction of the railways made it desirable to create a standard time. On 1 May 1909,
Amsterdam Time or Dutch Time was introduced. Before that, time was measured in different cities; in the east of the country, this was a few minutes earlier than in the west. After that, all parts of the country had the same local time—that of the Wester Tower in
Amsterdam (Westertoren/4°53'01.95" E). This time was indicated as GMT +0h 19m 32.13s until 17 March 1937, after which it was simplified to GMT+0h20m. This time zone was also known as the
Loenen time or
Gorinchem time, as this was the exact time in both
Loenen and
Gorinchem. At noon in Amsterdam, it was 11:40 in
London and 12:40 in
Berlin. The shift to the current
Central European Time zone took place on 16 May 1940. The German occupiers ordered the clock to be moved an hour and forty minutes forward. This time was kept in summer and winter throughout 1941 and 1942. It was only in November 1942 that a different Winter time was introduced, and the time was adjusted one hour backwards. This lasted for only three years; after the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945, Summer time was abolished for over thirty years, so during those years, standard time was 40 minutes ahead of the original Amsterdam Time. As of 2017, the Netherlands is in line with Central European Time (GMT+1 in the winter, GMT+2 in the summer, which is significantly different from Amsterdam Time).
New Zealand In September 1868, New Zealand was the first country in the world to establish a nationwide standard time. A
telegraph cable between New Zealand's two main islands became the instigating factor for the establishment of "New Zealand time". In 1868, the Telegraph Department adopted "
Wellington time" as the standard time across all their offices so that opening and closing times could be synchronised. The Post Office, which usually shared the same building, followed suit. However, protests that time was being dictated by one government department, led to a resolution in parliament to establish a standard time for the whole country. The director of the Geological Survey,
James Hector, selected New Zealand time to be at the meridian 172°30′E. This was very close to the country's mean
longitude and exactly 11.5 hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time. It came into effect on 2 November 1868. For over fifty years, the
Colonial Time Service Observatory in Wellington, determined the correct time each morning. At 9 a.m. each day, it was transmitted by
Morse code to post offices and railway stations around the country. In 1920, radio time signals began broadcasting, greatly increasing the accuracy of the time nationwide. ==See also==