On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 08:48:17 -0400, Steve Smith wrote: > >One thing blew my mind: "The plan also raises the prospect of neighboring >countries ending up an hour apart". Really? Did someone seriously say >that out loud? > >> https://www.dw.com/en/eu-to-stop-changing-the-clocks-in-2019/a-45495680 >> In 1883, when the U.S. adopted Standard Time, a timezone was about a day's travel. A passenger or operator might to reset a watch no more tnan once during a shift.
Technology has shrunk the world. Nowadays, by similar reasoning, a single timezone would be reasonable. GMT. Or perhaps two, one for the Eastern Hemisphere, one for the Western. OTOH, nowadays almost everyone's personal timekeeping device resets automatically for both geographic and seasonal boundaries. No need even to press a button. Why is this a matter of such intense contention? Late one morning circa 1972 from Boulder, CO, I attempted to phone a customer in Benton Harbor, MI. "He's out to lunch. When can he call you back?" "I'm about to leave for lunch. Two hours from now?" [I didn't know whether MI had one timezone or two, and wasn't sure they knew that CO was not observing DST, so I had shortcut the computation.] [Long pause while I envisioned mental arithmetic operating, but failing.] "What timezone are you in?" (Irrelevant. Would the result of the computation have been any different if I had been in Pyongyang?) -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
