Reply to post: why we have time zones around the world

tz database community up in arms over proposals to merge certain time zones

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

why we have time zones around the world

yes, this goes back to the 1800s when time zones were invented. With time zones, people could still use a clock and the sun (and maybe a rooster) to determine when to wake up and do their daily work [mostly agrarian and support of agrarian work] and when to sleep, but ALSO the train schedules were synchronized well enough to allow the railroads to schedule use of single-track rail lines (and avoid train wrecks). It made so much sense the entire world adopted the idea.

Besides, can you imagine how the TV schedules would be messed up if we were all on UTC? You'd still have "time zones" but they'd be based on when the morning shows and evening news comes on in your area...

When i was in the Navy, if we deployed longer than a few days, on the sub we'd switch to "Zulu Time" and operate on UTC until we came into a scheduled port, at which point we'd switch to the local time zone. It avoids switching the logs around every time you cross into a new time zone. Meals and watch rotation was all time based and so it was done in a sensible way. On a sub there's no night or day but the meals change. That's how you know what "time of day" it is. And watch rotation often throws you into 18 hour days (6 on, 12 off), which makes things that much more "interesting".

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