How did "standard" time start? Someone, somewhere had to start the clock running at a specific moment.

Answer 1

I've written five books about watches, so I love to see such questions as yours. The first watches weren't very accurate at all. They ran fast when first wound and gradually slowed until they quit in 12-16 hours. The first one was made by Peter Henlein of Nurnberg between 1480 and 1500. As decades passed, devices were invented that made watches more precise. Napoleon pioneered a type of standard time to make the movements of his troops in battles "run like clockwork". In the 19th Century, each area or even each city had its own time. What made it critical to have a national time standard? Trains did! If they weren't run on the same time, there could be wrecks, and that was a serious matter. Railroad watches developed a higher standard of accuracy than any that had existed before. I have a fine 1902 rairoad watch by Vacheron Constantin, one of the three top watch brands in the world. Even as old as it is, it keeps excellent time. I wish I had more time to give more details. Such a new watch would cost $25,000 or more.

Answer 2

First there was the international atomic clock which is used as a standard and for a lot of scientific purposes. There is a problem using this because the earths rotation is slowing down because of the moon causing tidal drag. The speed of the earth's crust also changes which does not help maters.

Then came Coordinated Universal Time (called UTC to keep the French happy). UTC has leap seconds thrown in every so often to account for the changing speed of rotation of the earth. UTC is used as a standard for all time zones around the world including the US. Summer times and daylight saving times result from just shifting the standard time derived from UTC by 1 hour. UTC is also known as Zulu time and is almost the same as GMT but not quite (that is another part of the story).

1961-01-01T00:00:01.422818 by the International Atomic clock was identified as UTC 1961-01-01T00:00:00.000000. So UTC started on January 1st 1961.

Answer 3

Time has existed as long as the universe. The methods to measure time were first invented by Galileo.

Answer 4

Not every state has "spring a head and fall back" it's up to each individual state to participate.

Answer 5

I KNOW WHY THEY STARTED MAKING YOU TURN YOUR CLOCKS AHEAD IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE WAR THEY NEEDED MORE LIGHT TO FIGHT.