Why isn’t this a popular thing?

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    16 days ago

    Time zones were the result of railroads getting towns to abandon their town specific clocks because of railroads.

    • hansolo@lemm.ee
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      16 days ago

      This really fails to acknowledge the hodegpode, anything goes chaos that was towns choosing their own noon based around someone with a watch and a bell looking at the shadow on a stick a few times a year.

      Sometimes standardization isn’t simply a terror induced by capitalism, and has accrual benefits.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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        16 days ago

        It wasn’t a hodgepodge; it was a system designed to the requirements of the day. Every town setting their own clocks to the local high noon wasn’t a bad idea for a while. Hell, the ability to transfer the knowledge of time from another part of the world only came about a few generations before.

        It wasn’t until the railroads started operating where it became important for different cities to have the same time down to the minute. Until then, local noon worked well enough.