How were timezones fixed by countries? Why did some countries get 3 timezones and some get only 1 despite being the same size? How did we get all the countries to measure time globally using the same measurement?
In: Earth Science
TLDR: A lot of the standards we used became standards because of European Imperialism. Timezones are a international guidelines, Countries can set them up however they want.
The 24 hour day has been in use since at least the Egyptians, but accurately measuring time was standardized by the Europeans because they were the first to make accurate and reliable clocks.
The British came up with the idea of timezones, defining the time at Greenwich England as ‘0’, because they realized that time wasn’t standardized across the empire. The Sun rises and falls at different times across the globe.
Having small accurate clocks was a critical development for navigation because a ships clock is used to determine your longitude. So it was natural that trade ships would show off their accurate clocks to other nations.
Like the Metric system, and the Imperial system of measure before it, a lot of nations adopted the European method of time keeping as a standard because it made it easier for international trade, that and good old fashioned colonization and imperialism.
Nations decide their own timezones. By international agreement the timezones are roughly defined based on longitude, but a country can decide which timezone it falls in to. Generally speaking you want to follow the international standard because in your timezone noon will be when the sun is overhead.
A country could decide it has just 1 timezone to make things easier for it’s people, or if it’s quite wide it will likely have more than 1.
Countries will typically assign their timezones base on their borders, for example crossing from one Province into another, because it’s convenient.
But there are some weird one-off cases. Newfoundland in Canada for example has a timezone that’s 1/2 an hour different from the main land. They are far enough off shore that having a half timezone makes sense, but it’s also believed it was done out of protest because the Newfies loved to be different from Canada back in the day.
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