Food For Thought

A Collection of Heretical Notions and Wretched Adages
compiled by Jack Tourette

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Time Zones

[Found in "Q & A on the News", San Jose Mercury News, 03 October 1993]

Time zones were established because railroads needed a standard for timekeeping at various points so timetables for operating trains could be prepared. Without time zones in which each community kept the same time, each town would use local solar time...and no two towns would agree on a common time. The potential for confusion - and collisions - was large.

India, Burma, Afghanistan, Iran, central Australia, Surinam, Newfoundland and several island nations observe time zones that differ from neighboring zones by a half-hour. Nepal is even more unusual -- it's five hours and 45 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, or 15 minutes ahead of India.

By international agreement, the Earth is divided into 24 time zones, each envisioned as 15 degrees wide -- though countries can carve out whatever time zones they please. In the center of each zone, theoretically, the sun is overhead at noon. But at the boundary of two zones, the sun would be overhead at 11:30 a.m. or 12:30 p.m. Because of this, a country on a boundary is more in sync with solar time by choosing a time a half-hour off. Most of the countries with staggered time zones are located close to a boundary or straddle one.

For simplicity's sake, many countries keep only one time, even though they're larger than one time zone -- most notably China, which straddles five zones but keeps Beijing time nation-wide. Iran, Afghanistan, India and Burma all straddle two zones, with their centers more or less at the boundary. By choosing the odd time, they split the difference.

As for central Australia, it was put a half-hour behind eastern Australia, rather than a full hour, because of its business links to the east.

How to explain Nepal? Or Newfoundland, which distances itself by a half hour from neighboring provinces? In many cases a country or territory chooses the odd time to underscore its independence and to be different from its neighbors.

© 1999 by MonkeyPants Press, an imprint of Bonobo Books, a division of Consolidated Trout, Ltd.
Last update: 03-July-2015
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