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April 5, 2002, 8:30 a.m.
Problem Time
Private enterprise and your watch.
By Lawrence W. Reed
Remember the old Chicago song, “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” Well, if you asked that question about 120 years ago, you could have received as many as 38 different answers in just one single state. Since this is the month we push our clocks ahead one hour (on April 7), it would be timely (sorry) to recount how standard time brought order out of what was once an astonishing degree of confusion. It’s worthy of special note that this great invention of convenience was the product not of government, but of private and even profit-seeking firms and individuals.
People in the continental United States have become so accustomed to four standardized time zones — Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific — that it’s hard to believe that we ever kept time any other way. But until a crucial date in 1883, what time it was depended on the nearest city or town. The time of day was a purely local matter as determined by the position of the sun. Noon was when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. Local people set their timepieces by some well-known clock in their respective community, such as one on a prominent church steeple or in a jeweler’s window.
This meant that when it was noon in Chicago, it was 12:31PM in Pittsburgh, 12:24 in Cleveland, 12:13 in Cincinnati, and 12:07 in Indianapolis. Or, when it was noon in Detroit, it was about 11:50 in Grand Rapids. Indeed, there were at least 27 different local times within the state of Michigan alone. Indiana was slightly less confusing with just 23 local times but Wisconsin with 38 was a clockwatcher’s nightmare.
“In every city and town,” wrote historian Stewart Holbrook in The Story of American Railroads, “the multiplicity of time standards confused and bewildered passengers, shippers, and railway employees. Only too often, errors and mistakes turned out disastrously, for railroads were now running fast trains on tight schedules; a minute or two might mean the difference between smooth operation and a collision.”
In 1872, railroad officials from around the country met in Missouri to arrange summer passenger schedules. To address the time problem, they formed a permanent organization to work on a solution. In October 1883, this body (then known as the General Time Convention) approved a plan, conceived entirely through the ingenuity of private citizens, to establish standardized time zones. They chose the date of November 18, 1883 for the adoption of the new system by virtually every railroad in the country. “Railroad time” quickly became the new “local time” everywhere — or at least almost everywhere.
One of the holdouts was the city of Detroit. The view that the sun, not man, should dictate what time it was enjoyed broad support in the city. Henry Ford of Dearborn was one citizen who complained about the disparity; he designed a watch with two dials, one that kept local time for when he was in Detroit and the other that kept standard time. Time marched on, but Detroit didn’t.
According to the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement, Detroit stuck to local time until 1900, when the city council ordered clocks to be set back 28 minutes to comply with Central Standard Time. The problem was that half the city obeyed and half refused, which made the confusion even worse until the city council rescinded its order and the city reverted to the old time. Somebody made a facetious offer to erect a sundial in front of city hall but it was scornfully referred to the Committee on Sewers. It wasn’t until 1905, by a citywide vote, that Detroit adopted standard time — becoming part of the Central Time Zone.
While standardized time zones were embraced voluntarily by most of the country, the U.S. government actually sought to prevent it. The attorney general ordered that no department of the federal government could participate until authorized by Congress, which took 35 years. In March 1918, Congress finally put Washington’s stamp of approval on what had been accomplished largely through private initiative, and made one major adjustment: It took Michigan and western Ohio out of the Central Zone and put them in the Eastern Zone, where they remain today. (Nationwide daylight saving time came much later, in 1966.)
What time is it? Thankfully, no matter where you live in America, there’s been just one answer to that question for about the last hundred years.
— Reed is president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.)
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