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by jcranmer 13 days ago
Okay, so you travel from, say, Washington DC to NYC and then you have to set your clock back by... I think it's like 13 minutes?

Which is why railroads started instituting time zones in the late 19th century: because it turns out having to recalibrate your watch every hour or so is a recipe for creating train crashes. Railroad time didn't become standard time until the early 20th century, in large part because a lot of the smaller cities were pretty irate at having to adjust their clocks. (It also doesn't help that coincidentally, places like Chicago and New York City are very near the center meridian of their time zone).
2 comments
gwbas1c 13 days ago
No, you completely misinterpreted me. Just keep true noon within ~30 minutes of noon in population centers, and allow rural areas ~45 minutes. DC and NYC would be in the same time zone.

Right now DC's true noon is more than an hour off. That's too much. (Where I live, my true noon is always ~30 minutes off, both in standard and dst, so I can't complain.)

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dave78 13 days ago
> places like Chicago and New York City are very near the center meridian of their time zone

Chicago is very close to the eastern edge of the Central time zone, though I know that was not true throughout history.

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jcranmer 13 days ago
If you look at the "natural" disposition of the time zones, Chicago is very near the appropriate longitude (90 W) for the median of the time zone. The border between Eastern and Central time zone should be about halfway through Ohio; instead, the Eastern time zone is skewed westward, since Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan wanted to be in the same time zone as NYC.
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