# Do any countries use a non-standard clock? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 28, 2010, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753 "2010-08-28T02:15:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Waffle\_Decider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/77aa72/32.png) [@Waffle\_Decider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waffle_Decider)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/21 "2010-08-29T13:48:01Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > In 2008, I went to the Chinese province of Xinjiang, which is a vast territory in northwestern China. For some reason, China is in one time zone, although the country is roughly the size of the United States (imagine LA and NYC the same time). So, what the locals did was to have their own local time which was 2 hours behind Beijing. In Kashgar, it was always good when asking about a time for something, was it on Beijing time or Xinjiang time. > > I was there in the summer, and because of the time zone, the sun did not go down until 11 PM which I thought was pretty trippy. I would call 9 PM, “9 in the afternoon” for laughs. > > What is the time zone for the North or South Poles? Could someone walk like, a 1/2 mile in any direction, walk a circle around the pole and go through all the time zones? Nice user name/topic combo. 🙂 The one Chinese time zone thing is only for political reason. It is not acceptable to have more than one time zone, because apparently that would threaten national unity, or something. :rolleyes: In the polar region, they just pick one time zone that is convenient and stick with it. For example, the research station at South Pole uses New Zealand time, because everyone goes through New Zealand to get to the station, and I think there are also support operations that go on over there. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/22 "2010-08-29T13:58:51Z")
A couple of areas (Newfoundland? Parts of India?) change their time zones by a half an hour, just to make it easier for the traveller. The entire Soviet Union advanced their time zones by an hour for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/23 "2010-08-29T14:23:11Z")
The whole of India is 5 hours 30 minutes of UTC and Nepal is 15 minutes ahead of India. [![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Timezones2010.png) ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Timezones2010.png) ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/24 "2010-08-29T14:42:15Z")
(Missed the edit window) And the reason for this, in the case of India, is IIRC they wanted to have the same time in the whole country and chose the local time (according to the sun) in the centre of it along an East-West line. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/25 "2010-08-29T14:54:58Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > The fact that it really never caught on is illustrated by the fact that most surviving clocks had a third hand which displayed 24 hour time as well: > > [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Horloge-republicaine2.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Horloge-republicaine2.jpg) It’s not that it never caught on, it’s that those clocks were meant to make the transition easier and let people get a feeling for how long a new “hour” should feel. Same concept as when France moved to the euro - prices were displayed both in euros and the equivalent value in francs, so people could get an idea of how much “real money” the item was worth. Now they’re only in euros, because euros have been there long enough that most people have gotten a handle on their worth. Except my grandmother, who still thinks in francs. No, not the “new franc” of 1958, the ones before that. I have no doubt that, had decimal time caught on, clocks without gregorian time on them at all would have become the norm. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/26 "2010-08-29T14:59:52Z")
The middle east also has some half-hour time zones. Until hub was deployed to Afghanistan, I had no idea that there were zones less than one hour. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/27 "2010-08-29T15:30:28Z")
In Saudi Arabia, for the longest time, they had a clock that had 12 hours from sunrise to sunset, and 12 hours from sunset to sunrise. Sunset and sunrise were “zero hours”, thus one minute before sunset was 11:59. And, 6:00 was when the sun was directly overhead. This meant that the evening hours and daylight hours would be of different lengths and those lengths would change during the year. It was a joy when working on the standard time zone routines in Unix. Judaism also has a similar religious time too. The main reason is that in Islam and Judaism, the day starts as sunset and certain prayers must be said by certain _times_ of the day. However, the Saudis officially adopted the standard 24 hour clock sometime in the 1970s and I suspect that the standard 24 hour clock was used unofficially in Saudi Arabia for years before its adoption. I’ve also never seen a Rabbi wear a Jewish clock wrist watch (although I’ve seen _Jewish_ clocks with the words “oneish”, “twoish”, “threeish” written around the dial). However, you can find sites that convert Jewish religious time to secular time like [http://www.myzmanim.com/](http://www.myzmanim.com/). Like the Gregorian calendar, the standard clock is pretty much universal mainly because if you deal with the rest of the world, you have to use it. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/28 "2010-08-29T16:38:59Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > …It’s the usual way of marking time outside North America. > [@Floater](#): > > …In everyday life times are given using the 12 hour system… So the 24 hour system is the “usual way” and at the exact same time the 12 hour system is the one that is used in everyday life? I’m no expert on “time” related “stuffs”, but it almost sounds like that might, just might, be a contradiction. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/29 "2010-08-29T16:42:08Z")
> [@Ruby](#): > > The middle east also has some half-hour time zones. Until hub was deployed to Afghanistan, I had no idea that there were zones less than one hour. Did anyone explain the reasoning? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/30 "2010-08-29T16:53:31Z")
Heck, Nepal and the Chatham Islands (NZ) have 45 minute offsets. Wiki claims they are the only two “official” zones not on an hour or half-hour offset. Newfoundland, and now Venezuela also have half-hour offsets, as does India. I think in some cases they’re just doing it to be difficult. Cecil’s take: > **[Why is India 30 minutes out of step with everybody else? INACTIVE](https://www.straightdope.com/21341294/why-is-india-30-minutes-out-of-step-with-everybody-else-inactive)** ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/31 "2010-08-29T18:16:36Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > > [@Floater](#): > > > > …It’s the usual way of marking time outside North America. > > > [@Floater](#): > > > > …In everyday life times are given using the 12 hour system… > > So the 24 hour system is the “usual way” and at the exact same time the 12 hour system is the one that is used in everyday life? > > I’m no expert on “time” related “stuffs”, but it almost sounds like that might, just might, be a contradiction. We (speaking of Norway) use both, and as Floater wrote, easily go back and forth between the two. When a friend asks when the new episodes of Mythbusters are on, I’ll say nine thirty (actually I’ll say halv ti, but that’s a different story), but the program listing will say 21:30, and my watch will show 21:30 when it’s time to drop everything else and turn on the TV. Everyones watches, if they have a dial and hands, will show 19:00, but if you ask them the time they’ll say it’s 7 o’clock, except the lady on the TV who’ll say “It’s 19 o’clock, here are the news.” Occasionally I’ll say things like we’ll meet up at 17:00, but not all that often. It’s of course possible that younger people do that more often, and that the old way is changing, but I haven’t noticed such a trend. ---
**Author:** ![Critical\_Mass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@Critical\_Mass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical_Mass)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/32 "2010-08-29T18:35:00Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > What is the time zone for the North or South Poles? Could someone walk like, a 1/2 mile in any direction, walk a circle around the pole and go through all the time zones? In Canada’s arctic, the answer is yes. Although there are no settlements close enough to the geographic north pole that it makes any practical difference. I lived in the arctic for a couple of years. The absurd thing that got me was the practice of daylight savings time. Like the south, some communities practice DST and switch their clocks around on the appropriate date. Some communities do not observe DST and don’t change clocks. Absurd because for 3 months of the year, there is no sunset. And for another 3 months of the year there is no sunrise. There is no practicality to observing DST in the arctic. I work in airline operations in the extreme north. Communicating local times in an area where time zones are only a couple of hundred miles wide with sporadic observance of DST is interesting. ---
**Author:** ![zagloba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@zagloba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zagloba)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/33 "2010-08-30T02:08:56Z")
The [clock on the town hall in Josefov](http://www.scrapbookpages.com/czechrepublic/prague/josefov/JosefovHistory.html), the old Jewish quarter in Prague, runs counterclockwise. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/34 "2010-08-30T03:08:00Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > > [@Ruby](#): > > > > The middle east also has some half-hour time zones. Until hub was deployed to Afghanistan, I had no idea that there were zones less than one hour. > > Did anyone explain the reasoning? The best explanation that I got was, “because they can.” I understand that some countries interpret it as a sort of Daylight Saving Time to more align time with sunrise but the half-hour and 15-minute deviations just don’t make much sense to me. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/35 "2010-08-30T08:27:26Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > > [@doubled](#): > > > > (Other than the obvious example of military time where you count up to 24 hours instead of counting up to 12 hours twice)? > > Why do you call this “military time”? It’s the usual way of marking time outside North America. “Outside North America” is a really big place, in Spain it’s 12+12 outside of TV and theater listings. It’s not a country, but monastic prayers follow the irregular-length hours of the Romans. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/36 "2010-08-30T15:21:20Z")
> [@Ruby](#): > > > [@RaftPeople](#): > > > > Did anyone explain the reasoning? > > The best explanation that I got was, “because they can.” I understand that some countries interpret it as a sort of Daylight Saving Time to more align time with sunrise but the half-hour and 15-minute deviations just don’t make much sense to me. It’s usually to get a better alignment between astronomical noon and nominal noon. Either for all of the country, most of the country, the part of the where the government sits, or because that’s what they used to do it before anyone came up with a common standard. It’s not like there’s any significant drawbacks to the solution. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/37 "2010-08-30T15:57:45Z")
> [@naita](#): > > Everyones watches, if they have a dial and hands, will show 19:00 Your watch dial has a “19”? I’ve never seen one that goes above “12” (or “XII” as the two in front of me have it). ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/38 "2010-08-30T17:43:59Z")
> [@naita](#): > > It’s not like there’s any significant drawbacks to the solution. Having lived near a time zone, I disagree. It’s hard enough to schedule between time zones without the added complexity of 15 and 30 minute intervals. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/39 "2010-08-30T18:05:20Z")
Well, the relatively few people who have to schedule cross-time zone events can just deal with it. That’s one of the burdens that internationalists have to bear. The 1 billion people in India are getting along just fine with their time zone. It would be more inconvenient for them to have a time zone boundary run right down the middle of their country, practically splitting Delhi. And choosing either Bombay or Calcutta time as the standard would throw sunrise-sunset too far off on one side or the other. As far as Nepal goes, I doubt very much there’s much international scheduling going on that needs to take into account what time it is there. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753/40 "2010-08-30T19:53:02Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > > [@naita](#): > > > > Everyones watches, if they have a dial and hands, will show 19:00 > > Your watch dial has a “19”? I’ve never seen one that goes above “12” (or “XII” as the two in front of me have it). How on earth did I manage to write that? I meant “unless they have a dial and hand”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-countries-use-a-non-standard-clock/551753.md?page=3)