Why the world switched to a single time counting system?
Before the introduction of time zones in each settlement used their solar time. Detected its geographical longitude of this item or the nearest major city. Thus, the difference in time was significant even between neighboring countries. Over time, when people began to travel, problems began to occur because of this.
Clock on the Tower of St. Mark in Venice, Italy
The first felt the inconvenience of navigators. But since they were in the sea for a long time, and rarely came to the ports, it was easy to restructure on the local countdown. Nevertheless, Portugal, Spain, France, England and Italy already in the Middle Ages, attempts to take a conditional "zero meridian" for the reference point. True, Greenwich speech was then not. Each country used its reference point.
Passenger traveling for the USA – For example, from the state of Maine in San Francisco, – was forced to translate the arrows of the clock about 20 times!
Only with the development of the rail network, the problem has acquired more acute character. Due to the fact that each settlement relied at one time, the confusion began to arise with the movement of trains. Passenger traveling for the USA – For example, from the state of Maine in San Francisco, – was forced to translate the arrows of the clock about 20 times! Time difference not only brought inconvenience to passengers, but also caused accidents.
Therefore, in 1870, the issue of establishing a general zero meridian was raised. And the next year in Antwerp the first international geographical congress. True, it was said only about marine maps, more precisely, Greenwich should be accepted for them as a zero meridian. There was no word about the mainland. Consequently, each country could still apply their own zero meridian.
Greenwich Meridian in Russia
Unified Meridian for all maps was adopted in October 1884 at the International Meridian Conference in Washington. Grinwichsky became them. The objections were, but as the main argument, the delegates led to the fact that the total carrying capacity of commercial vessels already using Greenwich Meridian is more than 70%. At the same conference, it was decided to introduce time zones.
Not all countries immediately accepted a unified time counting system. Russia formally moved to it in 1919, however, the formation of the rendering time throughout the country occurred even later, in 1924. The last state who accepted the new system was Liberia, where until 1972, the official time lagging behind Greenwich for 44 minutes. 30 seconds. And now the traveler does not remain anything, how to follow the clock arrows. But this is in any case better than being late for the train departing from local time station.
