The Railroads That Fixed Your Clock
"Private enterprise saw a dilemma as a problem to be solved. Governments dragged their collective feet."
Remember the old Chicago song, “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” Well, if you asked that question about 150 years ago, you could have received 38 different answers in a single state.
On March 9, we once again fiddled with the hands of our clocks by pushing them forward an hour. Daylight savings time will rule until we turn our clocks back to standard time on November 2.
How the invention of standard time brought order out of an astonishing degree of confusion is a great tribute to ingenuity in a free society. It’s a story that needs retelling before it’s completely forgotten.
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, set when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. Local people set their timepieces by some well-known clock in their respective communities, such as one on a prominent church steeple or in a jeweler’s window.
This meant that when it was 12:00 noon in Great Falls, it was about 12:10 p.m. in Billings, and 11:50 a.m. in Missoula. In Michigan at the time, there were at least 27 different local times. Indiana was slightly less confusing with just 23 local times, but Wisconsin—with 38—was a timekeeper’s nightmare. In a 2022 article in Trains.com, Carl Swanson explained,
A passenger on a Pennsylvania RR train arriving in Baltimore discovered local time was five minutes behind Philadelphia. If that traveler planned to continue west on the Baltimore & Ohio RR, he would be wise to adjust his watch. The B&O ran its trains on Baltimore time — at least until it reached Ohio, where it switched to Columbus time, unless, of course, the train was operating west of Cincinnati, in which case it was on Vincennes, Ind., time.
It was a deadly matter for the nation’s vast and growing rail network. Railroads were increasingly running faster trains on ever-tighter schedules. A minute or two could mean the difference between a nice ride and a full-on collision.
Two men are credited with inventing standard time and the time zones that define it. Professor C. F. Dowd, principal of Temple Grove Seminary for Young Ladies at Saratoga Springs, New York, first suggested the concept of four or more “time belts.” Later, William Frederick Allen, a railroad engineer, adapted and improved it and won acceptance for it by a crucial panel.
In 1872 railroad officials from around the country met in Missouri to arrange summer passenger schedules. To address the time problem, they formed the General Time Convention. Allen was named secretary and immediately set to work on making Dowd’s idea into a detailed proposal. In October 1883 the Convention approved Allen’s plan. The Dowd-Allen solution to establish standardized time zones was conceived and fine-tuned entirely by private citizens.
The Convention chose November 18, 1883, for adoption of the new system by every railroad in the country. “Railroad time” quickly became the new “local time” almost everywhere. So, when James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway from St. Paul to Seattle was completed in 1893, the time problem had been solved and solved privately.
While standardized time zones were speedily embraced by most of the country, the federal government actually sought to prevent it. The Attorney General ordered that no federal department could run according to the system developed in 1883 until authorized by Congress, which took 35 years. In March 1918 Congress finally approved what had been accomplished through entrepreneurial initiative.
Time marched on, the city of Detroit, Michigan, didn’t. The view that the sun, not man, dictates what time it is enjoyed broad support there. Henry Ford 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.
Detroit stuck to local time until 1900, when the City Council ordered clocks set back 28 minutes to comply with Central Standard Time. Half the city refused to obey, and the City Council rescinded its order. It wasn’t until 1905 that Detroit, by a citywide vote, adopted standard time and became part of the Central time zone.
Private enterprise saw a dilemma as a problem to be solved. Governments dragged their collective feet. As Yogi Berra would say, this sounds like “déjà vu all over again.”
Lawrence W. Reed writes a monthly column for the Frontier Institute in Helena, on whose board he serves. He is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education and blogs at www.lawrencewreed.com.