When were time zones implemented and who decided (and how) where to draw the lines?

Answer 1

Why? Railroad trains for the first time made schedules and accurate time important.

Who decided the time zone lines? The British. They were the most powerful empire in the world, so they drew most themselves since they owned like 1/5 th of the earth's surface in the late 1800s.

How? They based their 1st one off their most famous observatory in Greenwich.

Answer 2

I have to object to those who say that the British were the first to implement the time zones. During the past centuries, the prime meridian used as a reference to measure longitude has been Rome, Amsterdam, Paris and even the Canaries Islands, at the time of Christopher Columbus. Even until the beginning of the 20th century, the French used Paris as the prime meridian although they had the offset to Greenwich in the margin.
The time zones are primarily a division of 24 sectors. But then, each national authority has individually decided where to belong. Great Britain use UTC (previously known as GMT and Zulu for aviators) as winter time. Spain, being roughly on the same latitude, uses UTC+1 as winter time. A few countries even offset their local time by half an hour from the 24 time zones.

Answer 3

Good answers so far. But as to where to draw the lines: a day is 24 hours, so they divided the Earth in 24ths. The lines were changed slightly to make sense so that some areas (example some states in the US) wouldn't be divided into 2 time zones, however for very large areas, there is no way around this.

Answer 4

Starting at Greenwich prime meridian, ever 15 degrees E/W longitude is a time zone. There are 24 timezones. 180 degrees longitude is neither e or w, it just is, that is the international date line,

Answer 5

The United Kingdom was a sea going nation. Parliament implanted the Society of Sciences to map the World and establish a means of time. Greenwich Mean Time is standard throughout the World. We call it ZULU and it is based upon the 24 clock system. You have the capability to read it on your computer.

Answer 6

Time zones were set up at different times throughout the world. In the US, they were originally set up by the railroads to help maintain schedules.

Answer 7

i decided the time zones last year in february. I decided to draw the lines to divide up the races against each other.