63336: Time waits for no man, so how does the world cope?

14 November 2011

The first time zone was established in Great Britain in 1847; this was brought about by the railway companies who wanted a co-ordinated time to base their schedules on (hence the term "railway time"). The companies used Greenwich Mean Time, which itself dates back to 1675 and was used as a nautical tool.

By 1880, GMT had become the legal standard time in the UK, preceded by countries such as New Zealand who already had a standard country time in place by 1868. The USA started setting its local times in 1883 but it wasn’t until 1918 that the US time zones were firmly established.

Sir Sandford Fleming is credited with proposing standard world time zones based on a 24-hour clock, after he missed a train which had used pm and am times on its schedule. The International Meridian Conference of 1884 determined the Prime Meridian would run through Greenwich and this helped bring about the formation of the world's time zones, which by 1929 had widely been accepted around the globe.

With such a large planet and 24 time zones (or 25 nautical zones) to deal with, there were always going to be some quirks. Imagine living in Russia and trying to remember it has 9 time zones (it used to have 11 but boundary changes in 2010 led to 2 zones being abolished). Or that even though the Prime Meridian passes through France and Spain, both those countries are 1 hour ahead of the UK.

Time zones are not all perfectly straight lines running over the globe, though; some of them get bent and skewed out of shape to accommodate countries and governments. For example, India practically ignores the lines and sets its own time based on the Time and Frequency Standards Laboratory in New Delhi. The lines become particularly skewed in Alaska. Alaska uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC -9), but because the state is so massive it has westernmost points which are situated in the UTC -11 zone. This means that there are times when an Alaskan clock might show it is noon time, but the solar time is actually 9.42am.

The Hopi Nation, a large area of land in Arizona reserved for the Hopi Native Americans, uses Mountain Time (which is UTC -7), but does not recognise Daylight Saving Time. However, this reserve is an enclave and is completely surrounded by the Navajo Nation which is also on Mountain Time but does recognise DST. So in the summer these two areas have different times, even though one is completely surrounded by the other!

Other time zone quirks include Märket Island, which is in the Baltic Sea and is shared between Sweden and Finland. Finland is an hour ahead of Sweden, which means this tiny island the size of about 4 football pitches actually has 2 time zones. Nepal and areas of New Zealand use 45 minute increments instead of whole hours.

Finally, the time zone problem of Antarctica, which due to its location could be classed as part of any time zone, has been solved by research stations using the time of their nationality. So a British research station would have the same time as London and a Russian research station would use Moscow time.

63336, launched in April 2004 and the world's first premium text based question and answer service, is designed to answer – in minutes – any question sent via premium text or from the 63336 mobile app. From the start it has led the market in providing the fastest, most accurate, and most entertaining way to get answers to any question: from trivial, to tricky, to downright troublesome. Answers are provided by a highly–skilled workforce of home-based researchers, 95% of whom reside in the UK. The service is available 24/7, even when you're abroad.

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