When and why was it determined that Newfoundland's time zone be a 1/2 hr. different than most others?

Question

It appears that with the exception of a few time zones around the planet, all others are "X" # of hours ahead or behind Greenwich Mean Time. Wouldn't it be more convenient for places such as Newfoundland just be on the closest time zone - ie. Atlantic Time?

Answer 1

Once upon a time, every locality determined its time of day by observing when the sun was highest in the sky and calling that noon. When railroads began running fast enough and railroad began spanning the width of the US, this drove the people trying to publish schedules crazy. Meanwhile, cable and later wireless communications were making the offsetting of times more obviously a nuisance. So the various pressures resulted in a meeting that divided the earth into 24 1 hour bands which would refer time to Greenwich England Observatory (Britain ruled the waves), with countries being given the option of bending the lines as we do in the US to mostly follow state borders. The time in band would roughly match noontime for the middle of the band.
Some places, way out on the edge were irritated that they were put in a time band that reflected noon out in the ocean and chose to be 1/2 an hour out of sync so the sun was high at about their noon. India recently shifted to a half hour offset because they wanted the whole country on the same time and moved the observatory from the coast to the middle.
Texas is almost all in one time zone and a traveler who moves across the very wide state and camps out notices that the sunrise and sunsets shift greatly on the clock even if they don't notice the high point of the sun. The city of El Paso in the far west is in a different time zone to synch with the people nearby who are 1 hour behind the rest of Texas.

Answer 2

This may help.

From the article: "In 1963, the Newfoundland government attempted to bring the province into conformity with the other Atlantic provinces, but withdrew in the face of stiff public opposition."