Throughout early American history, cities and towns developed a tendency towards making
Time a local matter,- referring either to a church steeple or some locally known clock as
a standard.
As early as 1809, William Lambert, an amateur Astronomer,
recommended that Congress adopt a system of Time Meridians. In addition to this, the continuing
westward expansion of the United States, mostly helped by the railroads, brought further attention to
the fact that different states and localities were all keeping their own time.
As a result, it would be entirely possible for someone to leave
South Carolina at 2 pm and travel westward for a couple of hours, then arrive in a midwestern or
western town or city only to find that the time there was 12 pm.
In 1870, at the suggestion of Charles Dowd, a teacher from Saratoga
Springs, N.Y., a full system of time zones, each 15 degrees wide, and each containing one hour of time,
was published by the committe of railway superintendents of New York, in a pamphlet entitled "A System of
National Time for Railroads". Each time zone was simply called the first, second, third and fourth zones.
After minor revisions in 1872, it took another eleven years
before this concept of Standard time, was adopted by the railroads on November 18, 1883. This would come
to make time no longer a local matter and travelers going East or West would have a more reliable system of
time they could depend on.
Yet, small towns and cities were slow to adapt to this, and it wasn't
until March 19, 1918, a full 35 years later, and after the inception and widespread use of the automobile,
that the Government instituted The Standard Time Act, which officially recognized into law, the different time zones
that differentiate sections of the United States
Thus, Daylight Saving Time was established. Yet, a year later, when World
War I ended, in 1919, it was repealed. The concept of Time Zones was kept in law with the Interstate Commerce
Commission assigned to determine the boundaries of each time zone.
During World War II, in an effort to give war factory workers an extra hour
of daylight to help increase their production, Daylight Saving Time was re-constituted as "War Time", and kept
year round from 1942 to 1945 when the war ended.
When the War ended, the use of Daylight Savings Time became rather spotty
from one locality to another, until it was standardized by the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which specifically
denoted dates for the beginning and end of its observance with some local exeptions.
Eventually, the authority over time zone boundaries, held previously by
the Interstate Commerce Commission, was changed over to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Then all of
the Time Zones except the Eastern Time Zone were renamed.
Time Zone boundaries are still changing, with most of these occurring in areas
that are near Time Zone boundaries. While there has been some trend for boundaries to shift westward,
more often than not, most changes are made because of the law's accomodation of suggestions
that favor the "convenience of commerce." For the time being, this seems to be a reasonable guideline for determination
going forward.
LATITUDES LONGITUDES U.S.A. MARTIN SCHULMAN
