Why do we have time zones?

Time Zones

As everyone knows, the earth is round and rotates, in 24 hours, on its own axis. This means that in different places on the earth, the sun shines at different times. Very old times were determined locally by the position of the sun. When it was in the south, it was 12 o'clock. The well-known sundial then always showed the time. In practice, this meant that at such a place it was 12 o'clock and a little further away it was half an hour later.

The appearance of clocks

At the end of the 18th century the clock made its appearance and time could be determined with much greater accuracy. The correct time nevertheless remained very local. Only when the world became "smaller," due to the advent of railroads and radio, did the need to adopt a more even time.

The beginning of Time Zones

The idea of dividing the world into time zones came from Canadian Sandford Fleming. He came up with this idea because he was late for his train. A different time was used in his hometown than in the place where he had to catch his train. His proposal was to adopt a 24-hour clock worldwide, establish a zero meridian and divide the world into 24 time zones. His proposal initially received little support from the major nations of the world, but in 1884, at a conference in Washington, all agreed. It eventually took until 1929 for all the nations of the world to agree.

Did you know.

France is the country with the most time zones.

Now I'm pretty sure you're going to need a little more convincing on that one: France has many overseas territories in different parts of the world, each with their own time zones, which results in France having more time zones than any other country.

Russia has the most time zones within its own borders, as many as 12

Russia is a vast country spanning multiple climates and regions, and as a result, it has an unusual time zone situation. Despite having one of the largest land areas in the world, it has decided to divide its territory into 11 time zones. This makes Russia the country with the most time zones within its own borders, as many as 12 if we consider the specific case of the region of Kaliningrad which has its own time zone as well.

The island where it first celebrates the New Year is Kiritimati

Also known as Kiribati, it is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Fun extra fact: 2,000 kilometers above Kiribati is Hawaii. Not that super far apart, but in terms of time the two islands differ by as much as 24 hours. So when you fly from Hawaii to Kiribati, you skip a day, so to speak.

Time zones World

As you read at the beginning, the world is divided into 24 time zones, with each country in a time zone allowed and able to decide for itself whether they use winter time and daylight saving time. The prime meridian, the spot on Earth that is used as a benchmark or zero point, is located in England near the district of Greenwich, London.

To determine the size of the time zones, it was determined that each time zone should be 15° degrees wide. This was arrived at by dividing the circumference of the earth (360° degrees) by the number of hours in a day (24). The line of the prime meridian is 0° degrees, with -7.5° to the East and 7.5° to the West. This is all a guideline because in practice many countries use a different time zone than, geographically, they should. The best-known example of this is the Netherlands. In terms of location, the Netherlands falls within 7.5° degrees from the prime meridian, but we use Central European Time instead of Western European Time.

If each time zone differed by 1 hour, there would be 24 different time zones in the world. In practice, this is not so. The world currently has 37 different time zones of which 27 differ by a whole hour, 7 by half an hour and 3 by 15 minutes.