
US time zones (1857) - craigds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference#/media/File:Comparative-time-table.jpg
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beloch
While each city and town having their own unique time-zone seems anarchic by
today's standards, it actually made sense back then. Real-time interaction
with other time zones simply did not happen and travel was an infrequent thing
for most people. It made more sense for a time zone to be calculated
specifically for a given location. That way high noon was at exactly the same
time for any given town and sunrise, sunset, etc were the same for towns at
the same latitude, rather than ranging anywhere within an hour (or more in
some cases) as they do now. Today's approximate time zones arose as a trade-
off between astronomical precision and convenience in a shrinking world.

~~~
InclinedPlane
In 1900 most Americans died within 5 miles of where they were born. In the
20th century that changed dramatically. The modern world is an immensely
different place than the pre-modern world.

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scarmig
Your main point is well taken, but I'm skeptical of this particular statistic
--is there a source for this? I can't decipher what it means.

Is it that of all the deaths in 1900, over 50% of those occurred within 5
miles of the birthplace of the person dying? Or that 50% of all people who
were alive at some point in 1900 died within 5 miles of their birthplace?

~~~
droithomme
I don't know his source for 1900 or whether it refers to deaths in 1900, or
people alive. However, here is some useful context about this idea.

The keyword for this phenomenon as used by the US Census is "Lifetime
Mobility". It's calculated by comparing on long form census forms the given
state of birth to the current residence. Obviously this doesn't take into
account moving during one's life and moving back to one's hometown, so it's
not entirely accurate for a measure of people who never leave home. It also
has a very coarse granularity of state. In any case the finding was "Fifty-
nine percent of people in the United States were born in their state of
residence." Source:
[https://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-07.pdf](https://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-07.pdf)

A 2011 Census analysis of migration data shows that mobility varies by region.
At
[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/2011-11-15_migr...](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/2011-11-15_migration_slides.pdf)
see page 22 and note that for all age ranges, 50% or more remained in their
state. For the midwest and northeast though numbers are higher - about 60-70%.
The West is the anomaly with much higher rates of in migration. On page 23 we
see Louisiana has the highest number of people remaining in state, 78.8% and
Nevada the least at 24.3%. On page 43 we see the information we are looking
for. Century trends of those born in the same state they now live in from
1900-2010. This is fairly interesting and surprising. It shows a century of
very little migration in Pennsylvania where 76% live and were morn there, but
decreasing numbers for Florida, with 65.2% born and living there in 1900, but
35.2% living there also born there in 2010.

A 2008 national phone survey went into more detail looking to break that state
claim into those who never moved from their hometown at all. They found that
"nearly four-in-ten — have never left the place in which they were born".
Further along it explains in more detail "57% say they have not lived in the
U.S. outside their current state: 37% have never left their hometown and 20%
have left their hometown (or native country) but not lived outside their
current state."

[http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-
stay...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-stays-put-
wheres-home/)

So, if the number in 1900 was actually 50%, it is 37% now for people who never
move from their town of birth.

A genetic analysis of strontium isotope ratios in early hominid teeth suggests
that very long ago 90% of men stayed near where they were born, but 50% of
females moved away to other areas.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/early-women-had-
to...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/early-women-had-to-go-forth-
and-multiply-while-men-stayed-home-2291999.html)

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tvawnz
Anyone else having difficulty with their example problem? I keep getting 41
minutes difference, not 43.

~~~
claar
That's fantastic.. the "simple" calculation was so simple that the
example/explanation contained an error.

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scriptedfate
From "How much is time wrong around the world?"[1] see this map shaded to show
the difference between standard time and solar time:
[http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTime....](http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTime.png)

You can see that New York is pretty much still considered 'correct' whereas
Odessa, TX is rather behind. Egregious examples worldwide include Argentina,
most of Saskatchewan, Western China, most of Russia, and Eastern Greenland.

[1]: [http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-
around-t...](http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-
world/)

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InclinedPlane
Interesting how this relates to the transition of US culture towards
"monochronic" time:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics)

~~~
ghaff
Based on your reference, I'm not sure that standardized timezones so much
transitioned US culture toward a more schedule-oriented environment as allowed
it to expand to a larger scale. The banker in a specific city in Indiana with
a 2pm meeting probably expected his appointment to show up at a specific time.
Time zones made it more practical to schedule things across the country when
it became more important to do so.

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yread
> Harrisburg, Pa. 12:01

Seriously?! They were one minute ahead of Washington DC.

~~~
gpvos
Yes, why not? They are 200 km apart, coordination would be extra effort while
the need for it was small.

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em3rgent0rdr
The arguments used by this poster could be used today to argue for the
abolishment of timezones in favor of universal adoption of UDT.

~~~
ars
Until people start going to bed based on UTC that's not a realistic thing.

People are OK with modifying bedtime from suntime, for an hour, and probably
even a few hours - but not much more than that.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah, once you go to UTC half the world will have two dates for every daylight
period, which is just the tip of the iceberg of the practical nightmares which
will ensue.

Sometimes software engineers can get tunnel vision about the benefits of a
particular reductive paradigm shift.

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rplst8
In the US you have Samuel Pierpont Langley and the Pennsylvania Railroad to
thank for the modern time zone system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time#North_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time#North_America)

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bdcravens
I find it telling that that only Texas city listed was Galveston.

~~~
ghaff
In what way? Prior to the 1900 hurricane, it would have been reasonable to
pick Galveston as the pre-eminent city in Texas.

~~~
xellisx
I would have thought Dallas or Fort Worth would have been picked...

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Sanddancer
In 1857, Dallas was a town of less than a thousand people, and Fort Worth was
little more than a few people scattered around an abandoned army base.
Galveston really was the biggest thing in Texas back then.

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hellbanner
Time is kind of like programming. There's an underlying meaning (passage of
time, functions) that is agreed upon but a million interpretations on how to
implement.

~~~
Retra
That's true of all linguistic constructs.

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solotronics
Time zones are archaic. So many things would be simplified with a one world
time.

~~~
tempestn
Simpler isn't always better or easier. When traveling it's a lot easier to
change your watch (or more likely, have your phone update automatically) than
to re-calibrate your understanding of what times represent
morning/lunch/bedtime/etc. Similarly when coordinating meetings or events
across timezones, it's much easier to simply see that someone is 3 hours ahead
of you than to try to guess roughly what they'll be up to at a given time of
day based on their location, without the aid of time zones.

Unless you're suggesting that everyone keep the same hours everywhere. In
which case I'm all for it, as long as my side of the world gets to be the one
awake in the daytime.

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cosss
I am pretty sure everyone's office hours (to take it as an example) are still
going to be fixed at, say, -4 hours back from their noon till +5 hours
forward, so instead of saying "UTC+4" people are going to need to learn to say
"my noon is at 16:13" (or "16:00" even, i'm pretty sure no one will want to
live by any offset from the "global" noon other than those evenly divisible by
30 minutes). Probably abolishing timezones is much less of a profound change
than it seems to be.

~~~
ghaff
So you're effectively substituting one form of synchronization for another
that's already well established. After all, we already go to the trouble of
using DST as a way to better synchronize within a timezone. (Which not
everyone likes but I appreciate as a resident very far east in a timezone.)

