Actually, guys, the current time system had nothing to do with farmers.
Farmers started work when there was enough sunlight, and quit when it got
too dark. In fact, when the first New England farmers got clocks in the
early 19th century, they would stop the pendulums before going out into the
fields so the clocks would wear out more slowly. After all, why would you
need a mechanical device to tell you what time it was when you could look at
the sun and get that information?
The system of time zones we have today was first developed by the railroad
industry in the United States in 1883 so they could synchronize timetables
for nationwide and transcontinental railroad schedules. Before that, each
city determined for itself what time it was by when the town clodk would
strike noon.
Shortly after the timezone setup in the U.S. was begun, the concept spread
internationally to synchronize shipping schedules worldwide. Since Britain
was the leading maritime and naval power by far at the time, setting the
prime meridian, longitude point as the base reference and the 180-DG point
for the international dateline made the most since. It still serves us well
today.
If you think it'd be good to get up and go to work at 1300 hours, just ask
people in Russia how they liked it that they got programs broadcast from
Moscow on Moscow time, whether they lived in Leningrad or Vladivostok, at
least 11, maybe 12 or 13 time zones apart. That's right, You could hear
Moscow's breakfast show with information about going to work when you were
at home eating dinner after a long day's work, or maybe getting ready to go
to bed. I think they'd rather have their radio programs and tv programs
pegged to their local time, or something close to it, like we do in the U.S.
with our only four time zones in the 48 contiguous states, and another three
zones for Alaska and Hawaii.
If you read your history, you'll find that farmers resisted the time zone
thing, believing it to be some invention of the devil or something, or at
least a citified imposition on their lives that was totally irrelevant to
them.
If people actually do ever live in space, they will probably at first use
something like the Greenwich referrence point, or the time at the base that
controls the mission, like, say, Houston, or Moscow. If it is an
international effort, they will use UTC, formerly known as Greenwich Mean
Time, the way the international air traffic control system does today.
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Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA USA
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