Before 1883, there were no standard time zones in the United States and Canada. How strange that must have been if you were traveling.
Standardized time was first introduced in Britain in 1840, mostly because of the need for trains to have consistent departure and arrival times. People set their clocks based on the location of the sun at noon. Since that was an inexact measurement, towns could differ from each other by several minutes.
Hurray for amateur astronomer William Lambert, the first person to call for standardized time in the United States in 1809. He presented a recommendation to Congress, but Boo Congress who didnāt take on the subject until 1872.
Standard Railway Time (SRT) established four continental time zones; boundaries were based on geography, economics, the location of major cities, and the habits of the local populations. The zones progressed in one-hour increments, and the times were determined relative to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England.
The city of Detroit didnāt play well with others. They held out until 1900, and even then, half the citizens refused to set their clocks back 28 minutes to align with Central Time. So Detroit went back to āsun timeā for five more years, and finally adopted standardized time by a city vote in 1905.
