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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. I believe it was Chicago who

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Speaker 1: originally said, does anybody really know what time it is?

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is a story about how we all agreed

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Speaker 1: that we would know what time it is in any

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Speaker 1: given place, and it's a weird story, to be honest. Hi,

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Speaker 1: I'm Ben, and I believe it was the Quad City

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Speaker 1: DJs that said, come on righte it the train. There

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Speaker 1: we go. So we're we're we're today we're doing an

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Speaker 1: episode where we refusing the concept of time with the

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Speaker 1: history of the railroads. There we go. I like, I

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Speaker 1: like the elongation right there. That's perfect. And as we

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Speaker 1: get this train rolling, let's give a big shout out

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Speaker 1: to our own conductor of the locomotive. And that is

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History. Super producer Casey Pegram Casey, I almost want

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Speaker 1: you to change the sound cue to like a train whistle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it should be like a Quad City DJ sample, except

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Speaker 1: we'd probably get flagged for it. But yeah, this a

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Speaker 1: little a little traditional chu chu train. You were you

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Speaker 1: into trains as a lad, Casey were you fascinated by

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Speaker 1: by trains. Yeah, I had. I had the I had

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Speaker 1: the train set, I had the tracks where you could

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Speaker 1: design like elaborate traps for the for the you know,

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Speaker 1: the engine and mane. Wait a minute, you weren't like

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Speaker 1: one of those like arched villains that tied a damsel

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Speaker 1: in distress to the train tracks? Were you? I invented

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Speaker 1: the trolley problem without knowing the history about it. So

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Speaker 1: you bought the Lionel train set that came with a

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Speaker 1: waxed mustache exactly, yes, yes, and and some rope and

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Speaker 1: a damsel in distress and all that good stuff. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's funny that we're talking about trains today because just recently,

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Speaker 1: so we're recording this on August, and just recently I

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Speaker 1: got very very close to getting a to getting a

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Speaker 1: fair on amtrack because they had a they had a

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Speaker 1: buy one, get one free sale. And I wish I

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Speaker 1: got the timing right because I've always wanted to travel

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Speaker 1: on amtrack. Have you guys ever traveled by rail anywhere? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I took a line from LA to San Francisco once,

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Speaker 1: um and then I pretty recently took an amtrack from

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Speaker 1: Boston to New York City and it's crazy because it

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Speaker 1: like takes longer than a flight, um by quite a lot.

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Speaker 1: But then you realize you can get directly on the train,

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Speaker 1: you know, and at the station, which is like, you know,

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Speaker 1: minutes from where I was in Boston, and then you

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Speaker 1: get right off and you're at like Grand Central or

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Speaker 1: pen or whatever, and then you're just right there in

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Speaker 1: the city, as opposed to ending up at LaGuardia r

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Speaker 1: JFK and then having to like wait for a cab

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Speaker 1: and then you know, brave horrible New York traffic going

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Speaker 1: into the city, which can take like over an hour

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Speaker 1: in and of itself. So it actually kind of was

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Speaker 1: a zero sum game but much more pleasant. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: Plus you don't have to go through like airport scary.

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Speaker 1: And I mean when by the time you have factor

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Speaker 1: and all the time, usually trains are you know, within reason,

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Speaker 1: they're they're a lot faster because you're right there in

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Speaker 1: the city center. After ding ding ding. I love what

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Speaker 1: you said there, Casey. Once you factor in the time,

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Speaker 1: that's our episode today, trains and time. Right. Uh, First off,

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Speaker 1: little congratulations, I had no idea. I knew you were

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Speaker 1: traveling a lot to New York. But I didn't know

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Speaker 1: that you were able to take the Boston into New

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Speaker 1: York line. I'm curious, like, how long did it take?

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Speaker 1: How did you put it together? When we were going

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Speaker 1: to go on tour for another show. We do stuff

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Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. We actually spent a

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Speaker 1: lot of time persuading our management that we wanted to

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Speaker 1: travel by train. We weren't able to do it with

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Speaker 1: the schedule though, So how how did you put the

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Speaker 1: Boston New York thing? It was? I was traveling with

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Speaker 1: a coworker who like lives in Boston and like takes

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Speaker 1: it to New York very frequently. I can't remember the

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Speaker 1: name of the line. It's like there's a name for it.

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Speaker 1: It's it was nice. I mean there's like a dining

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Speaker 1: car in a quiet card and all that stuff, and

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Speaker 1: the views are nice. You go through Stamford and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Connecticut and like the countryside and it's really

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Speaker 1: picture asquing cool. But it was crazy because our ticket

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Speaker 1: was at a very specific time, because you can't just

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Speaker 1: like a subway, you got you buy a ticket for

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Speaker 1: a certain time. Um and then and we were super late,

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Speaker 1: really cut it close, literally hopped on of the train

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Speaker 1: and it started moving. It was very stressful. But the

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Speaker 1: thing that's so cool about writing the trains is there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun, little antiquated things they do. Like

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Speaker 1: someone they don't check your ticket when you get on.

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Speaker 1: They'd wait till it's in motion, and and they like

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Speaker 1: they check your ticket, and then they put a little

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Speaker 1: piece of paper on the back of your seat that

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Speaker 1: indicates when you're supposed to get off, because you only

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Speaker 1: your ticket fair if your fair price is determined by

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Speaker 1: how far you're going. So if you're getting off at

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Speaker 1: Stamford your two, it's cheaper than if you're going all

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Speaker 1: the way to New York City. And so they literally

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Speaker 1: write a little thing and stick it in this little

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Speaker 1: holder that's on the back of your seat, so that

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Speaker 1: they know if you're staying on longer than you're supposed to,

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Speaker 1: and they will make you get off. And I saw

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Speaker 1: a situation where somebody d hadn't bought a ticket and

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Speaker 1: they thought they could buy it on the It was

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Speaker 1: an older couple and they thought they would be able

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Speaker 1: to buy it on the train, and they didn't realize

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Speaker 1: it sells out, and they made them get off. No,

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Speaker 1: it was only one member of the party. That was

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Speaker 1: even the worst part. It was one person didn't have

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Speaker 1: a ticket and they had to get off and the

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Speaker 1: rest of them continued. It was really sad. But yeah, man,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting because like the history of the railroad is

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Speaker 1: so entrenched within the history of like the country, and

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Speaker 1: that technology really pushed so many things forward out of necessity.

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Speaker 1: Because if you think about time, uh, initially or you know,

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Speaker 1: for forever, time was very very relative. Um. Before you know,

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Speaker 1: even clocks were a thing. People would gauge time by

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Speaker 1: the movement of the sun where it was in the sky.

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Speaker 1: There wasn't like a codified numerical system for what time.

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Speaker 1: It was like in the Middle Ages, I don't believe. Um.

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Speaker 1: But then you had like the invention of like watches,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it became obviously clocks came first, but

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Speaker 1: then watches, pocket watches. Uh. They were able to refine

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Speaker 1: the processes and the gears and the springs and make

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Speaker 1: them much more compact. But even still, Uh, it might

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Speaker 1: be five fifteen in Washington, d c. And then in like,

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Speaker 1: you know, let's say Baltimore, Maryland, it would be like

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Speaker 1: five And it was because it was all based on

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Speaker 1: like this local time um, which was also kind of

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Speaker 1: a point of pride and the thing that folks didn't

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Speaker 1: want to give up when the push toward standardization became

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Speaker 1: a thing. It was like, no, we we we we

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Speaker 1: we have the right, uh, the sovereign right to to

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Speaker 1: decide what time it is here in our city. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, people were saying, we don't care what big

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Speaker 1: watch thinks. We know what time it is in Poughkeepsie,

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Speaker 1: and that's the time it's going to stay. In the

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Speaker 1: days before time zones, most towns would set their clocks

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Speaker 1: to noon when they saw the sun reach at zenith

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Speaker 1: in the sky each day, and so it was common

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Speaker 1: for the time in one town to be different from

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Speaker 1: the time in a town not too far away, just

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned. And we know that there are many

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Speaker 1: philosophers who have considered the concept of time as a

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Speaker 1: social struct construct. We know that there are physicists and

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Speaker 1: other scientists who have delved into the mystery of the

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Speaker 1: thing that we call time. But when we ask ourselves

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Speaker 1: about the origin of time zones a k a. The

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Speaker 1: reason that it's three hours earlier on the West coast

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Speaker 1: than it is on the east coast, we find a

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Speaker 1: very clear cut answer. Time zones were created by railroad officials.

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Speaker 1: They all got together in a series of meetings in

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three because they were dealing with a huge problem.

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Speaker 1: You see, trains are much faster than horses. They're much

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Speaker 1: faster than people walking or running, which means a train

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Speaker 1: leaving at say ten oh seven in one town needs

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Speaker 1: to know what time it actually is when they get

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Speaker 1: to their next stop. And because there was no uniform

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Speaker 1: agreement about how people should treat time, it was impossible

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Speaker 1: for the railroads to know what time it was depending

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Speaker 1: on their location. The US just it didn't have a

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Speaker 1: time series, right, And this wasn't This is more than

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Speaker 1: just a minor inconvenience or a scheduling you know, snaffoo.

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Speaker 1: This actually led to like loss of life in the

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Speaker 1: form of collisions because you have you know, when trains

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Speaker 1: are traveling on the same track, you gotta synk them

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Speaker 1: up so that they don't hit each other. And if

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Speaker 1: there was a disparity in time from one station to

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Speaker 1: the next, or or what have you, uh, it would

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Speaker 1: be a real problem. And they actually there was a

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Speaker 1: period um where they would have surgeons you know, like

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Speaker 1: like hired by the railway companies to travel on each

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Speaker 1: route in case a collision occurred and people were injured.

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Speaker 1: Because it was common enough of a thing that that happen,

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Speaker 1: you think they would have been more likely to figure

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Speaker 1: out how to solve this time issue than they would

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Speaker 1: just have like surgeons standing by, you know, to to

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Speaker 1: sew back on people's like severed limbs. Um. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: It might not have been that bad, but it certainly

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Speaker 1: seemed like a problem that needed to be dealt with

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Speaker 1: lickety split. Yeah, exactly. And this was a problem that

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Speaker 1: was brewing for a long time. Oh gosh, it's gonna

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Speaker 1: be tough to use the word time in this episode,

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Speaker 1: but well, we will will power through. We'll keep the

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Speaker 1: train rolling. When we say that train companies and railroads

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Speaker 1: are responsible for what we call time zones today, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about a specific instance of a larger phenomenon, which

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Speaker 1: is the effect of the economy on the concept of time.

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Speaker 1: The Age of Exploration and then later the Industrial Revolution

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Speaker 1: fundamentally changed the way the human species measures, understands, and

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Speaker 1: talks about time. There's a really great article in the

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Speaker 1: Atlantic by Derrick Thompson from sen that that goes into

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Speaker 1: some of the things about time and the way we

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Speaker 1: talk about time that we don't often think about, right,

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Speaker 1: like the idea of the weekend. Uh. Not the artist,

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Speaker 1: no ding on you if you're listening the weekend, but

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Speaker 1: you know the two days in between those five days

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Speaker 1: stints for many workers. The word weekend comes to us

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Speaker 1: from the Industrial Revolution, because if you think about it,

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Speaker 1: before the Industrial Revolution, it didn't really make a ton

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Speaker 1: of sense to think about things in terms of Monday

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Speaker 1: through Friday work week. If you worked on a farm

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Speaker 1: or you were involved in agriculture, the crops didn't care

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Speaker 1: that you wanted Saturday off. You had to move with

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Speaker 1: the weather, move with the seasons, move with the land.

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Speaker 1: And the concept of retirement is pretty old. It dates

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Speaker 1: back to army service in the sixteen hundreds, but it

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Speaker 1: became mainstream again when we as a species moved towards

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Speaker 1: an industrial economy. It's it's nuts, man. I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of us don't consider just how intimately tied the

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Speaker 1: economy is to the concept of time. Yeah. Even the

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Speaker 1: concept of happy hour, uh is something that wasn't a

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Speaker 1: thing until the nineteen fifties, and a lot of it

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Speaker 1: was kind of stuff to make you know, your worka day,

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Speaker 1: Joe's and Jayne's kind of feel a little bit better

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Speaker 1: about their life. So the idea of happy hour is

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Speaker 1: this kind of respite, you know, where you could like

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Speaker 1: kick your feed up and and get half off cocktails

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Speaker 1: at your local pub and then go back to, you know,

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Speaker 1: being a drone. But this absolutely went hand in hand

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Speaker 1: with these new labor laws that were brought about by

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Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution um and that completely changed change the

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Speaker 1: way people thought about things like time. The idea of

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Speaker 1: punching in you know, punching a clock, time stamps, all

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Speaker 1: of these things were not in the lexicon until this shift.

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Speaker 1: As we said, the rise in the Industrial Revolution brought

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Speaker 1: about much more efficient transportation, and all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: it mattered that there was a discrepancy between the time

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Speaker 1: in New York and the time and say d C.

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Speaker 1: In the New York Times. On April nineteen eighty three,

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Speaker 1: this problem reached the front page of the newspaper when

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Speaker 1: they calculated that no less than quote fifty six standards

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Speaker 1: of time are now employed by various railroads of the

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Speaker 1: country in preparing their schedules of running times. So If

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Speaker 1: you think the few time zones we have in North

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Speaker 1: America now are kind of difficult, boy, imagine having fifty

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Speaker 1: six different times you have to consider for the same

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Speaker 1: trade line. Insane, absolute bedlam. And you know, I may

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Speaker 1: have kind of jumped the gun a little bit earlier

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Speaker 1: in talking about the real problems that were caused by

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Speaker 1: not having standard time. Uh. And that was more than

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Speaker 1: just you know, being earlier being late because the time

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Speaker 1: in d C wasn't the same as the local time

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Speaker 1: in New York. It is really fascinating, by the way.

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Speaker 1: It was, just, like you said, that, a few minutes different.

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Speaker 1: But when you start to factor in all of these

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Speaker 1: different local times, um, it really became a problem. Even if,

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Speaker 1: like you know, just a few of them being slightly

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Speaker 1: off didn't seem like that big a deal. And this

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Speaker 1: absolutely caused some logistical nightmares. Beyond um just in mild inconvenience,

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Speaker 1: it was actually something that led to a number of

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Speaker 1: particularly nasty train wrecks. In eighteen forty nine, there's a

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Speaker 1: fabulous article by the way on Harvard about America's first

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Speaker 1: time zone that you hit me to Ben that describes

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Speaker 1: this situation in New England where this was absolutely kind

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Speaker 1: of mounting to be something truly truly deadly. Um. There

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Speaker 1: were just more and more frequent UM train wrecks that

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Speaker 1: were happening. People were being killed, The public was freaked out.

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Speaker 1: It was really a bad look for what should have

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Speaker 1: been very exciting, you know, kind of future technology that

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Speaker 1: was obviously benefiting people in many positive ways. But something

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Speaker 1: was there was like a disconnect here. Uh. There were

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Speaker 1: just too many time standards. Uh. Even within Boston area,

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Speaker 1: you had Boston time, you had Worcester time, you had

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Speaker 1: Springfield time. Every little town in Berg and Hamlet had

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Speaker 1: their own local time. The conductors would have to set

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Speaker 1: change the times of their clocks, of those pocket watches. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it would be something that would just so easily

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Speaker 1: go awry if it wasn't paid perfect to. And two

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Speaker 1: there were even um an individuals that would go around

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Speaker 1: and check the conductor's clocks and like find them or

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Speaker 1: sanction them in some way if their clocks weren't set correctly. UM.

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Speaker 1: So just a real brewing kind of nightmare situation that

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Speaker 1: was on the horizon. Uh, and something needed to be done. UM.

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Speaker 1: The railroads collectively decided that they needed to at the

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Speaker 1: very least without getting rid of these local times, have

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Speaker 1: something called railroad time. Yeah, this was a huge problem.

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Speaker 1: Before we get really morbid, I want to point out that,

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Speaker 1: for some reason in our research for this, Worster time

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Speaker 1: became stuck in my head as like a weird tagline,

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Speaker 1: maybe something from like a commercial for a snack, you know,

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Speaker 1: a bunch of kids or running at a refrigerator, kind

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Speaker 1: of like the sunny d commercial. But then someone's like,

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Speaker 1: it's worster time. And then there's you know, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: cheesy commercial music. Casey, you're like the Emperor of sound cues.

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Speaker 1: You know exactly what I'm talking about, and you are right. No,

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Speaker 1: this was a huge problem. As more and more trains

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Speaker 1: were being built and more and more trains were running

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Speaker 1: more and more frequently, train wrecks became common. Between eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty one and eighteen fifty three alone, there were nineties

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Speaker 1: seven different train accidents. Train wrecks and railroad time became

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Speaker 1: mandated along the tracks of Boston, and from that point

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Speaker 1: the synchronization of time began to proliferate and spread. Because

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Speaker 1: everybody was tired. Everybody who needed to work with the

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Speaker 1: train system was exhausted from keeping track of both their

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Speaker 1: local time and the weird, somewhat independent railroad time. So

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Speaker 1: talents just started to give up their local time because

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Speaker 1: it was easier to work with a more widely accepted system.

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Speaker 1: According to Peter Gallison, who is a Pellegrino University professor

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Speaker 1: and faculty director at Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments,

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Speaker 1: which I would love to visit UH and check out

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Speaker 1: in person one day. According to him, talents eventually started

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Speaker 1: to say, you know what, we don't want ten fifty

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Speaker 1: six as the town time and eleven am as the

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Speaker 1: railroad time, so let's just lose those four minutes. Let's

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Speaker 1: just scoot ahead. From now on, we'll use railway time.

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Speaker 1: And they were actually saving lives. It's so funny. Like

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Speaker 1: we mentioned a little bit earlier, how people fear and

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Speaker 1: despise change UH, and they're like, no, you'll have to

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Speaker 1: pry those two minutes out of my cold dead hands,

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Speaker 1: clock hands, because they you know, that's a point of pride.

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Speaker 1: It's like, this is a local, local control. We deserve

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Speaker 1: to have our own time, and no one's gonna tell

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Speaker 1: me otherwise. Um. But once you start factoring in you know,

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Speaker 1: actual loss of human life. I think it did a

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Speaker 1: pretty good job of making the case. But for a

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Speaker 1: while ben there there they there was like some clocks

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Speaker 1: had an extra minute hand on them that would be

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Speaker 1: uh set to local time, and then the you know,

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Speaker 1: the main minute hand on these conductor clocks would be

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Speaker 1: set to railroad time. But so interesting that there was

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Speaker 1: only a few minutes apart, and yet there was so

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Speaker 1: much grumbling about standardizing this. Right, right, right. It all

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Speaker 1: goes back to one of the hard and fast rules

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Speaker 1: of existence, which is two objects cannot occupy the same

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Speaker 1: space at the same time, which was happening with the trains.

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Speaker 1: So in the spring of eighteen three, the railroad tycoons,

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Speaker 1: the men of import in the training system, sent their

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Speaker 1: representatives and employees to a meeting of something called the

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Speaker 1: General Railroad Time Convention, And on April eleven in St. Louis, Missouri,

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Speaker 1: the railroad officials got down to business. They they vulturned up,

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Speaker 1: they assembled their you and their avengers, whatever you want

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Speaker 1: to call it, and they said, okay, now that we're

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Speaker 1: looking at all the facts, we're comparing all our different

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Speaker 1: weird local time zones, and how stressed out our conductors

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Speaker 1: are and our customers. We've agreed, let's create five time

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Speaker 1: zones throughout all of North America. Just the five we'll

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Speaker 1: call one provincial, one Eastern, one Central, one Mountain, and

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Speaker 1: one Pacific. So these railroad tycoons, maybe it's unfair to

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Speaker 1: call them that, these super conductors. They they thought that

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Speaker 1: they had reached brilliant, a brilliant solution. However, the concept

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Speaker 1: of standard time zones was something many people had all

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Speaker 1: ready thought about. There were professors more than a decade

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Speaker 1: earlier who had an idea about something like time zones. Uh.

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Speaker 1: One guy called them time belts, which is way cooler, Like,

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Speaker 1: I want a time belt, dude. That sounds clearly like

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Speaker 1: some sort of awesome time travel implement that you know,

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Speaker 1: like from time cop or like a total recall type situation,

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Speaker 1: A time belt. I love that. Is that the same

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Speaker 1: basically as this whole idea of time meridians or whatever,

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Speaker 1: like these lines of demarcation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you

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Speaker 1: know when when you and I were talking about this

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Speaker 1: before we're recording off, Mike, uh, you had brought up

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Speaker 1: a great point, Noel, which is that the UK was

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Speaker 1: as they would say on community streets ahead when it

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Speaker 1: came to time zones. Right, Yes, it's true been Um,

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Speaker 1: the Brits were indeed ahead of the curve. In seven

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Speaker 1: they adopted, developed, accepted universally a thing called Greenwich meantime,

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Speaker 1: which actually was sort of employed earlier than it was

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Speaker 1: like completely you know, accepted as a universal standard. In

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Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, uh, the fifth Astronomer Royal, Neville masculine Um,

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Speaker 1: decided to take Greenwich meantime to a wider audience. Before that,

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Speaker 1: it had been used for astronomy UM for gauging the

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Speaker 1: relationship between uh, you know, clock time and solar time. UM,

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Speaker 1: and a gentleman named John Flamstead Kim with a formula

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Speaker 1: that converted solar time to meantime, which is just an

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Speaker 1: average time. And he published this set of conversion tables

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Speaker 1: in the early sixteen seventies UM. And then he was

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Speaker 1: made the Astronomer Royal, and he moved into the new

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Speaker 1: Royal Observatory in wait for it, Greenwich Uh. And then,

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Speaker 1: like I said, it was then brought to a much

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Speaker 1: larger acceptance in the early seventeen hundreds. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to imply that it was adopted in the seventeen hundred,

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Speaker 1: that's not the case. It was just a common kind

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Speaker 1: of accepted thing that was used more for scientific pursuits

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Speaker 1: and for like navigation and things, and for uh, the

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Speaker 1: ability to UM calculate longitudes and latitudes from the Greenwich

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Speaker 1: meridian which was longitude zero degrees. So it was for

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Speaker 1: less kind of UM day to day activities and much

377
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Speaker 1: more for science and exploration and things like that. But

378
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Speaker 1: when the railroad kicked in in the UK as well, UH,

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Speaker 1: that is when they decided to use Greenwich meantime as

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Speaker 1: the standard UM as opposed to Bristol meantime, which was

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Speaker 1: ten minutes behind Greenwich meantime, or Cardiff meantime, which was

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Speaker 1: thirteen minutes behind. So they had a very similar problem

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Speaker 1: to what we had in the States, but they kind

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Speaker 1: of nipped it in the bud, as it were Worster

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00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: time keep coming in the US. We talked about that

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Speaker 1: April meeting in eighteen eighty three. UH. The General Railroad

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Speaker 1: Time Convention met again on October eleven, and during that

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Speaker 1: meeting they decided this new standard of US time zones

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Speaker 1: would take effects officially on Sunday, November eighteen eighty three.

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Speaker 1: This is a big change that you know officially is

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Speaker 1: going to affect every single household in the country. And

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Speaker 1: here's how they got away with it. I don't mean

393
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Speaker 1: to make it sound like a caper or a time heist,

394
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Speaker 1: even though that's a cool idea. First, newspapers media of

395
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Speaker 1: the time warned everybody explained to them what would happen,

396
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Speaker 1: just so everyone knew they weren't going crazy when they

397
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: woke up on November and felt like there were a

398
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 1: few minutes off. Secondly, the shift was also pretty small.

399
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:10,520
Speaker 1: It was only a matter of a few minutes for many,

400
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Speaker 1: many people in New York City, in the Big Apple,

401
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: the clocks would just be turned back four minutes, and

402
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 1: then from that moment going forward, noon in New York

403
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 1: would happen at the same time as noon in Boston, Philadelphia,

404
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:29,240
Speaker 1: and numerous other cities in the East like the same

405
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: exact moment. This has never happened before. It was amazing

406
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:38,680
Speaker 1: and funny story. Uh. People were trying to make money

407
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: off this too, right, Jewelers started offering to set watches

408
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,159
Speaker 1: to the new time standard and to sell watches too.

409
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,200
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting. This was a private event.

410
00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:53,919
Speaker 1: This is kind of like, just for an example, this

411
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Speaker 1: is kind of like maybe all the Internet search browsers

412
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 1: deciding to create just standardized time. The government wasn't involved

413
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Speaker 1: at first. The federal government didn't sanction this in the

414
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Speaker 1: United States, but the Naval Observatory Washington offered to send

415
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: telegraphs of the new time signal around so that people

416
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Speaker 1: could all synchronize their watches at once. Imagine how byzantine

417
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:22,240
Speaker 1: and complicated this is. I don't know about you guys,

418
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Speaker 1: but I have like several clocks I have to reset

419
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:27,399
Speaker 1: if the power goes out at my house, and then

420
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:30,200
Speaker 1: I also have like the superstition of, like I want

421
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Speaker 1: the coffee clock to be a few minutes ahead so

422
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Speaker 1: I can get a jump on the day. Dude, my

423
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 1: house is an utter ship show when it comes to

424
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Speaker 1: clock setting. I have this really cool kind of vintagy

425
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:43,440
Speaker 1: looking radio thing that has an Internet connection, and every

426
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: time it loses power, it resets, and it like the

427
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 1: day and date and all of that stuff is always

428
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: a little bit off, and it's so annoying because you

429
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:52,880
Speaker 1: think it would just grab it back from the Internet

430
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: immediately when it restarts, but you have to like go

431
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 1: to this app and it's just it's more trouble than

432
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 1: it's worth. But yeah, my my my stow of clock

433
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:04,960
Speaker 1: and my microwave clock are both completely different, and I

434
00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: feel like my life was falling apart. You guys, I

435
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: really need to sink all my stuff and get my

436
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 1: act together. I'm going to brag about a clock that

437
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,960
Speaker 1: have had for a number of years. It is not

438
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 1: connected to the internet, there's non advertisement. But I have

439
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:22,239
Speaker 1: this clock radio made by a company named Emerson, and

440
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 1: the first one I had like almost two decades. Again,

441
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 1: no radio connection, but if the power went out and

442
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:32,639
Speaker 1: then came back on, this thing would just reprogram itself.

443
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:35,120
Speaker 1: If you unplugged it for like a week and then

444
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: plugged it back in, it would know what time it was.

445
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: Growing up, this thing was like magic. I loved it

446
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: so much I bought I bought a second one. Um Emerson.

447
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 1: If you're listening, thanks that that's amazing. It's better than

448
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: it might be one of the best clocks I've ever had.

449
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: But anyhow, I digress, And we're doing a podcast about time,

450
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,200
Speaker 1: so you want to watch the time too. You might

451
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: imagine not everyone is thrilled about switching to standard time.

452
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:09,920
Speaker 1: We think about time as a currency of sorts. Right.

453
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: This is something I've said probably way too often on

454
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 1: other shows. But think about it. We pay attention, we

455
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 1: spend time, we count the minutes. Because of this, it's

456
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,679
Speaker 1: not really that surprising that people would object and they

457
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 1: would be like, hey, what are you doing with my

458
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:29,679
Speaker 1: four minutes? You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean

459
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: the concept of wasting time. It's certainly the only commodity

460
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:36,360
Speaker 1: we really and truly can never get back. I think

461
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: another thing we've talked about on the shows is the

462
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: whole idea of like sunken cost fallacy and like, you

463
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: know how, Oh, I can't possibly walk out of this

464
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 1: terrible movie because I've already paid the money, um, and

465
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: so I owe it to myself to like finish watching

466
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: this bad movie. But you're never gonna get that time back.

467
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,719
Speaker 1: You've already paid for the movie. Leave, for God's sakes,

468
00:28:55,720 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: do literally anything else. Um. So time understandably, it does

469
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: have a very uh important kind of resonance with folks,

470
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: which is another reason why I think people really fought

471
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: back initially, um against this idea of standardizing time, even

472
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: though you'd think they would see that it was really

473
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: a beneficial thing to everyone. But you know, people are

474
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: people are particular, and they like what they like. But

475
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: you know, people that use the rails um and were

476
00:29:24,080 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: commuters really appreciate it. But folks that didn't, that were

477
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: maybe like more rural and like farmers or something, and

478
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: they they really didn't leave their neck of the woods

479
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: too often. They kind of fought back against it, you know,

480
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: And and it certainly caused other layers of confusion initially

481
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: as well. And there's a pretty great example from the

482
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Inquirer that describes why maybe folks would have been

483
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: distrustful about this, especially poorer folks. November twenty one and three,

484
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: the Inquirer described a situation where a gentleman who owed

485
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: money was ordered to appear. You're in a Boston courtroom

486
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:04,960
Speaker 1: at nine in the morning on the previous day. And

487
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: this is the takeaway that the newspaper kind of came

488
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: came up with, uh quote. According to custom, the poor

489
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: debtor is allowed one hour's grace. He appeared before the

490
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: commissioner at nine forty eight o'clock standard time, but the

491
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: commissioner ruled that it was after ten o'clock and defaulted him.

492
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: The case will probably be brought before the Supreme Court. Yeah,

493
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: but at what time is the Supreme Court meeting? Uh?

494
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 1: You see how complicated this gets? Yeah, absolutely, And and

495
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: this is when some folks are adopting the standard time,

496
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: some folks are holding back. There's really no rhyme or reason.

497
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: This really shows the need to just you know, uh

498
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: s or get off the pa as they say, rip

499
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: off the band aid of horology, the study of time. Yeah,

500
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: you're you're absolutely right. Let's stick with the New York

501
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: Times here. On June four, there was a piece explaining

502
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: how the city of Louisville, Kentucky, had given up on

503
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,240
Speaker 1: standard time. They just set all their clocks ahead eighteen

504
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: minutes to return to solar time, and this did not

505
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: end well for them because the banks in Louisville adopted

506
00:31:18,360 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: the railroad time standard, but other businesses did not so

507
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: throughout the entire city. For a while, people had no

508
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 1: clue when business hours actually began or ended every day.

509
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 1: Throughout the eighteen hundreds, most businesses saw the value of

510
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: moving to standard time, and by the eighteen nineties, standard

511
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 1: time and time zones were accepted as every day in

512
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 1: ordinary even though they weren't official until the passage of

513
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighteen Standard Time Act. This also established daylight

514
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 1: saving time, and that's something that was probably on the

515
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: minds of a lot of our fellow listeners, especially we're

516
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: talking losing time. I think we can all agree it

517
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: feels like you get somehow, in some weird abstract way,

518
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: ripped off when the clock springs ahead an hour, and

519
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: then you're kind of like saving time when it springs back. Anyhow,

520
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 1: there's the US right following the lead of the UK,

521
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:24,240
Speaker 1: but time zones had yet to go global. Brittain in

522
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: France had already had their national time standards decades and

523
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: decades earlier. But a big part of why they were

524
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: able to do that is that they were just geographically

525
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: smaller countries. They didn't need more than one time zone

526
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: the way the US did. So when the US was

527
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: able to adopt time zones in three they set an example,

528
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 1: a precedent for the rest of the world. That's correct.

529
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: In four um, representatives from more than two dozen nations

530
00:32:56,520 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 1: met at something called the International Meridian Conference in Washington,

531
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 1: d C. Where they decided on where these lines of

532
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: demarcation would fall all around that uh, that that gold

533
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 1: standard we talked about the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England,

534
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: using that as the official prime meridian or the zero

535
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 1: point of longitude for like the entire world. This is insane.

536
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: This is like, I can't believe they were able to, like,

537
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 1: you know, agree on all this stuff. Um and that. So,

538
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: traveling from UH east from the primaryriddan, you get an

539
00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: hour um with each time zone that you pass through

540
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: to go west, time goes backwards by an hour with

541
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 1: each time zone. This is what we know today. So

542
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: by round about the mid twentieth century, most of the

543
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 1: world was kind of settled on this particular system of

544
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: international time zone uh and that is twenty four zones

545
00:33:53,800 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: spaced out approximately fifteen degree intervals of longitude, and there

546
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: you have it. It's so strange. Uh I didn't imagine

547
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,840
Speaker 1: myself being in this position. But thank you long dead

548
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 1: railroad tycoons. There's so much more we could talk about

549
00:34:14,680 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: with time zones. They're functional, but they're weird, especially when

550
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,400
Speaker 1: you look at the ways different countries and different regions

551
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: may treat them for one reason or another. But ironically enough,

552
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to make time to do that another day.

553
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: We so hope you enjoyed this story. We didn't even

554
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: get to talk about Casey Pegram's travels as le Bush

555
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:43,320
Speaker 1: around the various climes of Europe. I didn't I didn't

556
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: mention the Shinkansen in Japan, which is like writing in

557
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,239
Speaker 1: the future. But I've got to tell you, I really

558
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,759
Speaker 1: want to get on Amtrak one day. And no, I

559
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 1: want to thank you because you've inspired me to make

560
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: it a reality. It is a fun time. I guess

561
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: things are normal ish now, like with social distancing, and

562
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 1: maybe the people they aren't booking them as heavily where

563
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 1: you have to like you know, lower lower capacity. But apparently, oh,

564
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: by the way, this is just the last little thing

565
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: to leave us with. And I'm sure this is I

566
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,879
Speaker 1: hope this is the case on trains as well, but apparently, Uh,

567
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: the air filtration system in subway cars is like one

568
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 1: of the most efficient air filtration systems around because it

569
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: doesn't like it. The way it filters out microbes in

570
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: the air um is very very effective. And so you

571
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: think about sitting in a subway car and like, oh,

572
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: I'm just breathing in everybody's you know, gook. Uh not

573
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 1: the case apparently, And I wish I could remember where

574
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: I saw this, but I saw a really great infographic

575
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: that showed how air is circulated, so I think it's

576
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 1: probably a similar system on trains on Amtrak trains. I

577
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 1: don't know this for sure, but I would hope that

578
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: that we are approaching a place where that will be

579
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 1: a reality, where we can safely do a really cool

580
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: uh long haul train trip. And I would love to

581
00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: maybe we can do it as a as a family,

582
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: as a ridiculous history family agreed. Thanks so much the

583
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram, to our researcher associate Gabe Louisier,

584
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:10,439
Speaker 1: and to Alex Williams who made the time to uh

585
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: compose this slapping bopy here at the beginning and end

586
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 1: of every episode. It is both a slap and bop

587
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: and a bop and slap, a high five slap for

588
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: a job all time, Alex, I don't know where I

589
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:22,480
Speaker 1: was going with that, but I had to sew it

590
00:36:22,560 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: up somehow. Huge thanks to Christopher Hasiota is always here

591
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 1: in spirit, like Mufasa, hovering in the sky watching down

592
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: upon us from the afterworld. Huge thanks to research or Extraordinariy,

593
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: Gabe Louisier, uh. And also Jonathan Strickland, that notorious and

594
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,360
Speaker 1: dubious quis ter um who I think we probably have

595
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: not heard the last of agreed, and it's ashamed that

596
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: he wasn't here for this episode because I think he

597
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: could do the perfect railroad villain voice. Indeed, and also

598
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: you know, while twirling his his his waxed mustache, which

599
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: he has, I promise he really does. We'll see you

600
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: next time. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit

601
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you

602
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows