WEBVTT - Should We All Be in the Same Time Zone? 0:00:02.000 --> 0:00:04.520 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:10.080 Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vog obam here. If you travel 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.440 or used to, you know how much of an inconvenience 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.920 it is to have to remember to adjust your watch 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.520 and the clock on your laptop to reflect the local 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.319 time at your destination, and then remember to switch it 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:24.440 back when you return. Or maybe you've missed an appointment 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:27.040 for a telephone conference with somebody in a distant city 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:30.160 because you've forgot that nine am in Chicago is seven 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:32.720 am in Los Angeles and ten am in New York. 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:36.199 Either way, time zones, which are supposed to keep our 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.360 clocks consistent with solar time wherever we are on the planet, 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.560 can really be a pain when you're traveling across multiple 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.680 time zones or communicating with someone who's in a distant place. 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:48.960 It's strange to think that time zones were invented as 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.240 a way of reducing confusion rather than causing it. And 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.280 since solar time varies as you move even a short 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.000 distance from one spot to another across the planet, for 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.480 most of human history, the time of a varied everywhere. 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.680 We spoke with Steve Hankey, a professor of applied economics, 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:10.280 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He explained time was 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.080 only measured by placement of the sun, so the sun 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:17.240 dial dictated what time it was, so noon in London, 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.280 for example, came ten minutes earlier than noon and Bristol, 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:22.320 which is a hundred and twenty miles or a little 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.920 under two hundred kilometers to the west. Even after people 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.959 started using mechanical clocks in Europe at the thirteen hundreds, 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:34.040 the inconsistencies persisted, but confusion about the exact time wasn't 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.560 a huge problem until the eighteen hundreds, when railroad trains 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.600 started making it possible to quickly travel from one place 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.120 to the next. All of a sudden, Hanky said people 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.920 were missing trains and you began to have near misses 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.800 and train collisions occurring. In the US, every city had 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.040 a different time standard. You had three hundred local time 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:57.360 zones in the US. The railroads eventually condensed it down 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:02.040 to a hundred. Finally, a Scottish born engineer, Sir Sanford Fleming, 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.840 ms to train in Ireland in eighteen seventy six due 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:08.000 to a mistake in a printed timetable, and he decided 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:11.480 to fix things. Fleming devised a system in which the 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:15.000 world was divided into twenty four time zones spaced at 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.520 roughly fifteen degree intervals across the planet. Eventually the world 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:22.600 adopted Fleming system, in which time was based not on 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.639 the local solar day, but upon how many time zones 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.560 separated a location from the Royal Greenwich Observatory in the UK, 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:34.200 where Greenwich Meantime or GMT, was determined by the average 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.480 time of day when the sun passed over the prime 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:41.320 meridian at Greenwich. Most people already used c charts which 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.960 designated Greenwich as the prime meridian or longitude zero degrees. 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.279 This is the line that divides the eastern and western hemispheres. 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.040 On November three, which became known as the Day of 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.880 two Noons, railroads in North America converted to a system 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:01.480 of just four time zones, Eastern time, Central time, Mountain time, 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.959 and Pacific time. Many cities passed ordinances adopting the system 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.720 as well, and eventually it became the standard across the US. 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:14.560 Using GMT as a starting point forestalled any competition between 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:16.920 different U S cities for the honor of being the 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.520 prime meridian. But even with fewer time variations, time confusion 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.680 again arose as a problem in the twentieth century. The 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.360 advent of air travel compressed distances even more, and the 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.519 rise of the Internet and mobile devices enabled instantaneous communication 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.040 between people all over the planet and gave us the 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.760 seven culture, in which we're tightly interconnected to events in 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.800 distant places. That's why a few years ago Hanky and 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.440 his colleague Richard con Henry, JOHNS Hopkins University professor of 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:51.160 physics and Astronomy, proposed an even simpler solution. They want 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.000 to do away with time zones completely and put the 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:59.200 entire world on Universal Time or UTC, under their system. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.880 When it's nine clock in one place, it's nine o'clock 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.920 everywhere on the planet, even if it's morning in one 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.680 place and evening in another. In addition to making it 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.800 easier to adjust to travel, having one time across the 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.640 planet would make it easier for people who need to, say, 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.719 set up conference calls with groups of individuals scattered from 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:21.159 Montana to Germany, which Hanky, who's the supervisory board chairman 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.560 of a Dutch company, sometimes has to do. Henry said 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:28.240 via email. Endless confusion would be gone forever. Life will 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:32.280 be simpler, abolishing time zones might also eliminate the negative 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.240 health effects from sleep deprivation that affect people who live 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:37.880 on the western edge of time zones, which is totally 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:42.000 a thing. Since Hanky and Henry proposed abolishing time zones 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:46.039 in others have supported the idea as well, and to 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.080 a certain extent, a switch to universal time already has 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.640 taken place. Pilots and air traffic controllers in the US, 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.920 for example, rely on Universal time, or Zulu time as 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.799 they call it. Financial traders who's dealings sometimes cross borders 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.159 as well as time zones, stamp transactions in Universal time 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:05.560 as well to make sure that the pricing is correct, 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:10.040 and the Internet essentially runs on universal time. Some might 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.719 wonder if a switch to universal time would alter the 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:16.080 rhythm of people's daily schedules, but Hanky doesn't think so. 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.080 He said, people say, oh, if we went to universal time, 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.440 that would mean would be opening businesses when it's dark outside. No, 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.800 your business would go like it does now with the 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.080 sun in New York or Baltimore. If you open normally 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:32.599 at nine am, that would be four or two pm 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.279 on your watch. It might take some getting used to, 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.560 but Hanky thinks that within a generation children who grew 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.640 up with universal time would no longer associate, say, seven 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.320 am with breakfast time or nine am with starting work, 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:49.400 and the switch is not unheard of. Henry said China 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.440 currently has this problem and that it has one time 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.239 zone for a huge swath of East West real estate, 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.120 but it's totally cured by having local decisions as to 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.960 opening closing times for businesses and so on that would 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:12.240 obviously be essential for a worldwide system. Today's episode was 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:14.800 written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced by Tyler Clang. 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.120 For more on this and months of other timely topics, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.960 visit how Stuff Works dot com. Brain Stuff is production 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.479 of I Heart Radio or more podcasts. For my heart Radio, 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.400 visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:26.720 listen to your favorite shows.