How did railroads invent the system of time?

The major railroad companies as a result began to operate on a coordinated system of four time zones starting in 1883. Standard time was transportation-driven and, as a result, the government coordination of time zones was handled by transportation agencies.



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On November 18, 1883, the railroads moved forward with the adoption of four U.S. time zones, an idea that had been proposed 11 years earlier by Charles Dowd, a Yale-educated school principal. The time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific, are still in place today.

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At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies.

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Standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads on November 18, 1883. Prior to that, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by a well-known clock (on a church steeple, for example, or in a jeweler's window).

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At the beginning of the century, U.S. citizens and immigrants to the country traveled primarily by horseback or on the rivers. After a while, crude roads were built and then canals. Before long the railroads crisscrossed the country moving people and goods with greater efficiency.

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