Why are time zones important?

[johnpost]

it is hard for people to be relative.

[panache45]

It would simplify things if all the “day” people lived on one side of the planet, and all the “night” people on the other . . . with “morning” and “evening” people in-between.

[Chronos]

We have time zones because our timekeeping system pre-dates rapid cross-continent communications.

In the early days of our modern timekeeping system, 12:00 comes at about midday, when the Sun is highest in the sky. And people got used to that. So when clocks got invented and became widespread, that’s how people would set their clocks. This meant that your clock probably wasn’t showing the same time as a clock in the next city over, but nobody had any reason to care about that.

Then the railroads came along, and they did care. It’s unmanageable to have a different time at every single station on your route. But people didn’t want to change from the system they were familiar and comfortable with. So the railroads created a system that was almost like the old system, similar enough to still be comfortable, and which didn’t require anyone to change their clocks by more than a half-hour or so (and who cares about time that precisely, other than the railroads, anyway?). So now, noon still comes at (about) 12:00, but you can also tell what time it is right now in New York when you’re in Kalamazoo.

[GusNSpot]

I have a brother in Kalamazoo. From my visits to the area, if they way they ride their snowmobiles is any indication, they are not smart enough to figure it out and don’t care anyway, ‘just go faster’ about covers that place.

[Grotonian]

@Chronos

So now, noon still comes at (about) 12:00, but you can also tell what time it is right now in New York when you’re in Kalamazoo.

Well of course you can; they’re in the same time zone.

[even_sven]

@LSLGuy

AIUI, Mainland China does it more or less that that way. The whole country is on Beijing time.

So if sunrise today in Beijing is 8AM Beijing time, sunrise in the far west of the country will be around 1pm Beijing time. And folks there will break for lunch when the sun is high in the sky and their clocks say 4pm, and eat dinner shortly after sunset when their clocks say 10 pm. And then they’ll get up for work shortly before sun-up when their clocks say around noon.

It works for them, ~20% of humanity. Which proves it *can *be done. Whether it *ought *to be done is another question.

It doesn’t work particularly well at all.

[chrisk]

@LSLGuy

AIUI, Mainland China does it more or less that that way. The whole country is on Beijing time.

So if sunrise today in Beijing is 8AM Beijing time, sunrise in the far west of the country will be around 1pm Beijing time. And folks there will break for lunch when the sun is high in the sky and their clocks say 4pm, and eat dinner shortly after sunset when their clocks say 10 pm. And then they’ll get up for work shortly before sun-up when their clocks say around noon.

It works for them, ~20% of humanity. Which proves it *can *be done. Whether it *ought *to be done is another question.

Added to everybody else’s objections, they might be ~20% of humanity, but they’re packed somewhat less of the world’s longitude, and any problems involved with their scheme would scale up much more dramatically once the differences in solar time between any two points became greater.

[LSLGuy]

@even_sven

It doesn’t work particularly well at all.

Good to get some local knowledge. As you can see, I never claimed it “worked well”. Merely that it “worked”; i.e. They weren’t routinely experiencing massive failures due to time confusion.

I left unstated my assumption that something so counter to the way the rest of the planet does it (and counter to apparent “common sense” or citizen convenience) could only be the product of totalitarian government.

[Diceman]

@LSLGuy

Good to get some local knowledge. As you can see, I never claimed it “worked well”. Merely that it “worked”; i.e. They weren’t routinely experiencing massive failures due to time confusion.

I left unstated my assumption that something so counter to the way the rest of the planet does it (and counter to apparent “common sense” or citizen convenience) could only be the product of totalitarian government.

Indeed. Most of China’s population lives in the eastern part of the country, near the coast. Certainly, Beijing and everyone who makes the decisions does. None of these people really care much about anything farther west, so if people in central or western China find the single time zone inconvenient, the Powers That Be don’t really give a shit.

[md2000]

Business leaders will have no problems…

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[LSLGuy]

@Diceman

Indeed. Most of China’s population lives in the eastern part of the country, near the coast. Certainly, Beijing and everyone who makes the decisions does. None of these people really care much about anything farther west, so if people in central or western China find the single time zone inconvenient, the Powers That Be don’t really give a shit.

We have/had a similar issue in this country. Arguably it was historically more bottom-up pull than top-down push, but it is real.

The US eastern time zone is much wider than the 15 degrees of longitude it ought to be. The result is a clock time noticeably far off vs. solar time for folks in the western portion of the time zone. Which effect gets worse at extreme latitude. The US Central time zone is also a bit too wide, and offset west from where it ought to be. “Ought” as I use it here being defined as “matched up to solar time as closely as possible”.
Both of these are artifacts of a desire to be on Washington or New York time back when business and political power was even more concentrated there. Whether historically it was folks from, e.g. Cincinnati clamoring to be on NY time or the NY corporate HQs demanding that the Cincinnati branch office operate on their time is not something I’m able to answer.

[Carryon]

Part of the issue people have with time zones is a lot of them are too far off. For instance, Detroit and Indianapolis should be on Central Time. They originally were. They petitioned to move to Eastern Time to be on the same schedule as New York.

So right now Detroit and Indianapolis, are effectively one hour ahead of their “real” time zone. So they are basically already on DST. So when they move their clocks ahead an hour, they are two hours head.

At one time there was even a serious proposal to move Chicago to Eastern Time.