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Railroad Tycoons Decided What Time It Is Now · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. I believe it was Chicago who
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: originally said, does anybody really know what time it is?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Today's episode is a story about how we all agreed
• 0:47
  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,
• 0:53
  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
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: you to change the sound cue to like a train whistle. Yeah,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it should be like a Quad City DJ sample, except
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: we'd probably get flagged for it. But yeah, this a
• 1:40
  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
• 2:02
  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
• 2:09
  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,
• 2:19
  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
• 3:55
  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
• 4:06
  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,
• 4:41
  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
• 10:24
  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,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: like the idea of the weekend. Uh. Not the artist,
• 11:20
  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
• 11:26
  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,
• 11:35
  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
• 11:45
  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
• 11:52
  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
• 12:03
  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
• 12:22
  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,
• 12:34
  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
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: with these new labor laws that were brought about by
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution um and that completely changed change the
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: way people thought about things like time. The idea of
• 13:03
  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
• 13:26
  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.
• 13:34
  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
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: country in preparing their schedules of running times. So If
• 13:55
  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
• 14:14
  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
• 16:00
  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.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Before we get really morbid, I want to point out that,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: for some reason in our research for this, Worster time
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: became stuck in my head as like a weird tagline,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: maybe something from like a commercial for a snack, you know,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a bunch of kids or running at a refrigerator, kind
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of like the sunny d commercial. But then someone's like,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it's worster time. And then there's you know, I don't know,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: cheesy commercial music. Casey, you're like the Emperor of sound cues.
• 17:03
  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
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: were being built and more and more trains were running
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: more and more frequently, train wrecks became common. Between eighteen
• 17:19
  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
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: mandated along the tracks of Boston, and from that point
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the synchronization of time began to proliferate and spread. Because
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: everybody was tired. Everybody who needed to work with the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: train system was exhausted from keeping track of both their
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: local time and the weird, somewhat independent railroad time. So
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: talents just started to give up their local time because
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it was easier to work with a more widely accepted system.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: According to Peter Gallison, who is a Pellegrino University professor
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and faculty director at Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: which I would love to visit UH and check out
• 18:18
  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
• 18:29
  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
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: we mentioned a little bit earlier, how people fear and
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: despise change UH, and they're like, no, you'll have to
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: pry those two minutes out of my cold dead hands,
• 18:52
  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
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: to have our own time, and no one's gonna tell
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: me otherwise. Um. But once you start factoring in you know,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: actual loss of human life. I think it did a
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: pretty good job of making the case. But for a
• 19:08
  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
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: uh set to local time, and then the you know,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the main minute hand on these conductor clocks would be
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: set to railroad time. But so interesting that there was
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: only a few minutes apart, and yet there was so
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: much grumbling about standardizing this. Right, right, right. It all
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: goes back to one of the hard and fast rules
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: of existence, which is two objects cannot occupy the same
• 19:37
  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,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the men of import in the training system, sent their
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: representatives and employees to a meeting of something called the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: General Railroad Time Convention, And on April eleven in St. Louis, Missouri,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the railroad officials got down to business. They they vulturned up,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: they assembled their you and their avengers, whatever you want
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: to call it, and they said, okay, now that we're
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: looking at all the facts, we're comparing all our different
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: weird local time zones, and how stressed out our conductors
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: are and our customers. We've agreed, let's create five time
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: zones throughout all of North America. Just the five we'll
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: call one provincial, one Eastern, one Central, one Mountain, and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: one Pacific. So these railroad tycoons, maybe it's unfair to
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: call them that, these super conductors. They they thought that
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: they had reached brilliant, a brilliant solution. However, the concept
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of standard time zones was something many people had all
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: ready thought about. There were professors more than a decade
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: earlier who had an idea about something like time zones. Uh.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: One guy called them time belts, which is way cooler, Like,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I want a time belt, dude. That sounds clearly like
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: some sort of awesome time travel implement that you know,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: like from time cop or like a total recall type situation,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: A time belt. I love that. Is that the same
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: basically as this whole idea of time meridians or whatever,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: like these lines of demarcation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: know when when you and I were talking about this
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: before we're recording off, Mike, uh, you had brought up
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: a great point, Noel, which is that the UK was
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: as they would say on community streets ahead when it
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: came to time zones. Right, Yes, it's true been Um,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the Brits were indeed ahead of the curve. In seven
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: they adopted, developed, accepted universally a thing called Greenwich meantime,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: which actually was sort of employed earlier than it was
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: like completely you know, accepted as a universal standard. In
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, uh, the fifth Astronomer Royal, Neville masculine Um,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: decided to take Greenwich meantime to a wider audience. Before that,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it had been used for astronomy UM for gauging the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: relationship between uh, you know, clock time and solar time. UM,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and a gentleman named John Flamstead Kim with a formula
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that converted solar time to meantime, which is just an
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: average time. And he published this set of conversion tables
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in the early sixteen seventies UM. And then he was
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: made the Astronomer Royal, and he moved into the new
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Royal Observatory in wait for it, Greenwich Uh. And then,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: like I said, it was then brought to a much
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: larger acceptance in the early seventeen hundreds. I don't want
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: to imply that it was adopted in the seventeen hundred,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: that's not the case. It was just a common kind
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of accepted thing that was used more for scientific pursuits
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and for like navigation and things, and for uh, the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: ability to UM calculate longitudes and latitudes from the Greenwich
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: meridian which was longitude zero degrees. So it was for
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: less kind of UM day to day activities and much
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: more for science and exploration and things like that. But
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: when the railroad kicked in in the UK as well, UH,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: that is when they decided to use Greenwich meantime as
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the standard UM as opposed to Bristol meantime, which was
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: ten minutes behind Greenwich meantime, or Cardiff meantime, which was
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: thirteen minutes behind. So they had a very similar problem
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to what we had in the States, but they kind
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: of nipped it in the bud, as it were Worster
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: time keep coming in the US. We talked about that
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: April meeting in eighteen eighty three. UH. The General Railroad
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Time Convention met again on October eleven, and during that
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: meeting they decided this new standard of US time zones
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: would take effects officially on Sunday, November eighteen eighty three.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: This is a big change that you know officially is
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: going to affect every single household in the country. And
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: here's how they got away with it. I don't mean
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: to make it sound like a caper or a time heist,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: even though that's a cool idea. First, newspapers media of
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the time warned everybody explained to them what would happen,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: just so everyone knew they weren't going crazy when they
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: woke up on November and felt like there were a
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: few minutes off. Secondly, the shift was also pretty small.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: It was only a matter of a few minutes for many,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: many people in New York City, in the Big Apple,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the clocks would just be turned back four minutes, and
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: then from that moment going forward, noon in New York
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: would happen at the same time as noon in Boston, Philadelphia,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and numerous other cities in the East like the same
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: exact moment. This has never happened before. It was amazing
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and funny story. Uh. People were trying to make money
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: off this too, right, Jewelers started offering to set watches
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to the new time standard and to sell watches too.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: And this is really interesting. This was a private event.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: This is kind of like, just for an example, this
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: is kind of like maybe all the Internet search browsers
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: deciding to create just standardized time. The government wasn't involved
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: at first. The federal government didn't sanction this in the
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: United States, but the Naval Observatory Washington offered to send
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: telegraphs of the new time signal around so that people
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: could all synchronize their watches at once. Imagine how byzantine
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and complicated this is. I don't know about you guys,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: but I have like several clocks I have to reset
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: if the power goes out at my house, and then
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: I also have like the superstition of, like I want
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the coffee clock to be a few minutes ahead so
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I can get a jump on the day. Dude, my
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: house is an utter ship show when it comes to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: clock setting. I have this really cool kind of vintagy
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: looking radio thing that has an Internet connection, and every
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: time it loses power, it resets, and it like the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: day and date and all of that stuff is always
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a little bit off, and it's so annoying because you
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: think it would just grab it back from the Internet
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: immediately when it restarts, but you have to like go
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to this app and it's just it's more trouble than
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: it's worth. But yeah, my my my stow of clock
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and my microwave clock are both completely different, and I
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: feel like my life was falling apart. You guys, I
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: really need to sink all my stuff and get my
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: act together. I'm going to brag about a clock that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: have had for a number of years. It is not
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: connected to the internet, there's non advertisement. But I have
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: this clock radio made by a company named Emerson, and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the first one I had like almost two decades. Again,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: no radio connection, but if the power went out and
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: then came back on, this thing would just reprogram itself.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: If you unplugged it for like a week and then
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: plugged it back in, it would know what time it was.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Growing up, this thing was like magic. I loved it
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: so much I bought I bought a second one. Um Emerson.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: If you're listening, thanks that that's amazing. It's better than
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: it might be one of the best clocks I've ever had.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: But anyhow, I digress, And we're doing a podcast about time,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: so you want to watch the time too. You might
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: imagine not everyone is thrilled about switching to standard time.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: We think about time as a currency of sorts. Right.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: This is something I've said probably way too often on
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: other shows. But think about it. We pay attention, we
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: spend time, we count the minutes. Because of this, it's
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: not really that surprising that people would object and they
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: would be like, hey, what are you doing with my
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: four minutes? You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the concept of wasting time. It's certainly the only commodity
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: we really and truly can never get back. I think
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: another thing we've talked about on the shows is the
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: whole idea of like sunken cost fallacy and like, you
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: know how, Oh, I can't possibly walk out of this
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: terrible movie because I've already paid the money, um, and
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: so I owe it to myself to like finish watching
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: this bad movie. But you're never gonna get that time back.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: You've already paid for the movie. Leave, for God's sakes,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: do literally anything else. Um. So time understandably, it does
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: have a very uh important kind of resonance with folks,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: which is another reason why I think people really fought
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: back initially, um against this idea of standardizing time, even
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: though you'd think they would see that it was really
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a beneficial thing to everyone. But you know, people are
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: people are particular, and they like what they like. But
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: you know, people that use the rails um and were
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: commuters really appreciate it. But folks that didn't, that were
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: maybe like more rural and like farmers or something, and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: they they really didn't leave their neck of the woods
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: too often. They kind of fought back against it, you know,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: And and it certainly caused other layers of confusion initially
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: as well. And there's a pretty great example from the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Inquirer that describes why maybe folks would have been
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: distrustful about this, especially poorer folks. November twenty one and three,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the Inquirer described a situation where a gentleman who owed
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: money was ordered to appear. You're in a Boston courtroom
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: at nine in the morning on the previous day. And
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: this is the takeaway that the newspaper kind of came
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: came up with, uh quote. According to custom, the poor
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: debtor is allowed one hour's grace. He appeared before the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: commissioner at nine forty eight o'clock standard time, but the
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: commissioner ruled that it was after ten o'clock and defaulted him.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: The case will probably be brought before the Supreme Court. Yeah,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: but at what time is the Supreme Court meeting? Uh?
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: You see how complicated this gets? Yeah, absolutely, And and
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: this is when some folks are adopting the standard time,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: some folks are holding back. There's really no rhyme or reason.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: This really shows the need to just you know, uh
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: s or get off the pa as they say, rip
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: off the band aid of horology, the study of time. Yeah,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: you're you're absolutely right. Let's stick with the New York
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Times here. On June four, there was a piece explaining
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: how the city of Louisville, Kentucky, had given up on
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: standard time. They just set all their clocks ahead eighteen
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: minutes to return to solar time, and this did not
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: end well for them because the banks in Louisville adopted
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: the railroad time standard, but other businesses did not so
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: throughout the entire city. For a while, people had no
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: clue when business hours actually began or ended every day.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Throughout the eighteen hundreds, most businesses saw the value of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: moving to standard time, and by the eighteen nineties, standard
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: time and time zones were accepted as every day in
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: ordinary even though they weren't official until the passage of
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the nineteen eighteen Standard Time Act. This also established daylight
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: saving time, and that's something that was probably on the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: minds of a lot of our fellow listeners, especially we're
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: talking losing time. I think we can all agree it
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: feels like you get somehow, in some weird abstract way,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: ripped off when the clock springs ahead an hour, and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: then you're kind of like saving time when it springs back. Anyhow,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: there's the US right following the lead of the UK,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: but time zones had yet to go global. Brittain in
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: France had already had their national time standards decades and
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: decades earlier. But a big part of why they were
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: able to do that is that they were just geographically
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: smaller countries. They didn't need more than one time zone
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the way the US did. So when the US was
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: able to adopt time zones in three they set an example,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: a precedent for the rest of the world. That's correct.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: In four um, representatives from more than two dozen nations
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: met at something called the International Meridian Conference in Washington,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: d C. Where they decided on where these lines of
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: demarcation would fall all around that uh, that that gold
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: standard we talked about the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: using that as the official prime meridian or the zero
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: point of longitude for like the entire world. This is insane.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: This is like, I can't believe they were able to, like,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: you know, agree on all this stuff. Um and that. So,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: traveling from UH east from the primaryriddan, you get an
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: hour um with each time zone that you pass through
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: to go west, time goes backwards by an hour with
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: each time zone. This is what we know today. So
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: by round about the mid twentieth century, most of the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: world was kind of settled on this particular system of
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: international time zone uh and that is twenty four zones
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: spaced out approximately fifteen degree intervals of longitude, and there
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you have it. It's so strange. Uh I didn't imagine
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: myself being in this position. But thank you long dead
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: railroad tycoons. There's so much more we could talk about
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: with time zones. They're functional, but they're weird, especially when
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: you look at the ways different countries and different regions
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: may treat them for one reason or another. But ironically enough,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to make time to do that another day.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: We so hope you enjoyed this story. We didn't even
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: get to talk about Casey Pegram's travels as le Bush
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: around the various climes of Europe. I didn't I didn't
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: mention the Shinkansen in Japan, which is like writing in
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: the future. But I've got to tell you, I really
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: want to get on Amtrak one day. And no, I
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: want to thank you because you've inspired me to make
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it a reality. It is a fun time. I guess
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: things are normal ish now, like with social distancing, and
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: maybe the people they aren't booking them as heavily where
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: you have to like you know, lower lower capacity. But apparently, oh,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: by the way, this is just the last little thing
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: to leave us with. And I'm sure this is I
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: hope this is the case on trains as well, but apparently, Uh,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: the air filtration system in subway cars is like one
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: of the most efficient air filtration systems around because it
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't like it. The way it filters out microbes in
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the air um is very very effective. And so you
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: think about sitting in a subway car and like, oh,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I'm just breathing in everybody's you know, gook. Uh not
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the case apparently, And I wish I could remember where
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I saw this, but I saw a really great infographic
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: that showed how air is circulated, so I think it's
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: probably a similar system on trains on Amtrak trains. I
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: don't know this for sure, but I would hope that
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that we are approaching a place where that will be
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: a reality, where we can safely do a really cool
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: uh long haul train trip. And I would love to
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: maybe we can do it as a as a family,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: as a ridiculous history family agreed. Thanks so much the
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram, to our researcher associate Gabe Louisier,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and to Alex Williams who made the time to uh
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: compose this slapping bopy here at the beginning and end
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of every episode. It is both a slap and bop
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and a bop and slap, a high five slap for
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: a job all time, Alex, I don't know where I
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: was going with that, but I had to sew it
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: up somehow. Huge thanks to Christopher Hasiota is always here
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: in spirit, like Mufasa, hovering in the sky watching down
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: upon us from the afterworld. Huge thanks to research or Extraordinariy,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Gabe Louisier, uh. And also Jonathan Strickland, that notorious and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: dubious quis ter um who I think we probably have
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: not heard the last of agreed, and it's ashamed that
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: he wasn't here for this episode because I think he
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: could do the perfect railroad villain voice. Indeed, and also
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: you know, while twirling his his his waxed mustache, which
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: he has, I promise he really does. We'll see you
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: next time. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows