Why is there time zones??

Question

im just curious.

Answer 1

Imagine everybody having the same time. 2:30 in everybody in the world's watch and there is ur answer

Answer 2

b/c of the way the earth rotates around the sun for instance: if its brightly sunny out in florida and its 2:00pm and maybe its pitch black outside in like russia how could it be 2:00 pm in both? and b/c its even different dates in some places

Answer 3

Before the railroads, it was common for every town to keep its own time - thus the clock on the tower at city hall or church was a reference.  Noon was when the sun was at its highest.

For navigation purposes, the Naval Observatories were the reference for clocks carried on ships because if you have a clock set to point A and it doesn't lose time, then if the sun is at its highest at 6pm on the clock, then you are 1/4th of the earth away from the observatory.

  When trains started doing fast long distance journeys, the different times in different towns drove them buggy - did they print for the big cities and note how far off the towns were or did they use local time on their schedules?  So they were a major force in getting time organized in bands (time zones) around the world, along with the telegraph, etc.   The earth was divided up into 24 zones each 15 degrees wide (15*24=360) matching the sun in its timing as the world turned and each was set to be the same time one hour ahead of the one west, one hour behind the one east.

  Nations were allowed to fudge the lines so cities and states were not cut down the middle. Almost all of Texas is in one zone and it is very wide so sunrise varies by more than an hour across the state. And some countries do the whole country on the same time which may be 1/2 an hour off the related neighbors - I believe India is.

  As for using one time for all purposes - people get bugged if the sun isn't up at 0900 and having lunch at 2300 seems silly.

Answer 4

it has something to do with the way the sun rotates around the earth... sorry, its not the BEST answer. but its the best answer I could give you.

Answer 5

because the earth rotates and sun time is different everywhere around the world east to west, the railroads invented  zones for purely practical reasons

Answer 6

Because local time is established by the course of the sun. The point in time when the sun is directly overhead is established as noon or 12:00 PM.

Astronomically each longitude has it's own local time, but that gets to cumbersome. Hence the system of 24 timezones.

Frankly I think even that is too much, especially in today's high tech fast paced world. I would support a movement to adopt one universal time - GMT. That would make trade, commerce, and travel so much easier.