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A time ball on a rooftop in Boston, Massachusetts, 1881.
Winslow Upton and William Babcock Hazen/U.S. War Department, Washington, D.C., 1881
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Winslow Upton and William Babcock Hazen/U.S. War Department, Washington, D.C., 1881
A time ball on a rooftop in Boston, Massachusetts, 1881.
Winslow Upton and William Babcock Hazen/U.S. War Department, Washington, D.C., 1881
(Note: This episode was originally published on 2019.
In the 1800s, catching a train on time was no easy feat. Every town had its own “local time,” based on the position of the sun in the sky. Indiana had 23 local times. Michigan had 38. Sometimes the time changed every few minutes.
This caused a lot of confusion and a few train crashes. But eventually, a high school principal, a scientist, and a railroad official did something. They introduced time zones in the United States. It took some effort—they had to convince all the big cities to adopt the system, overcome some objections that the railroads were infringing on “God’s time,” and figure out how to tell everyone what time it was. But they did it, starting one day in 1883, and they stuck with it. This is the story of how, in all the ways, the railroads created the world we live in today.
This episode was originally produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and edited by Jacob Goldstein. Jess Jiang is Acting Executive Producer at Planet Money.
music: “You let me start“”Star Alignment” and”Road to the Cevennes“”.
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