Standardized time across a whole country came into existence with train networks. It was important for these because people needed to know when the train would be there to catch it, and also being a few minutes off could cause crashes. They’d get someone with a good watch to sync it up in London, then travel around the network and have station operators sync their clocks from the watch. A clock on the side of the Bristol Corn Exchange still has both London and Bristol time, 12 minutes apart.
When industrialization started to become a thing, people would have to get up early before dawn to go to their shift, but didn’t have alarm clocks yet. (Got the vague impression this was related to standardized time, and I could see that being related, but it also seems unnecessary.) So there’d be knockers-up, who went around waking people. No good to knock on the door, that could wake neighbors too (either annoying them or giving them a service for free). A long cane could rap directly on their bedroom window, or at least one person used a pea-shooter. Not a great wage, a lot of them were older women who couldn’t do much physical labor any more. Also constables with the night shift would often moonlight as knockers-up, and the constable first told about the first Jack the Ripper victim was too busy doing that to come look at the body at first. The last one retired only in the early 70s. Vaguely related, there was at least one report in the ripper case saying things like “at 6:19… six minutes later” which is just way more precise than people would have been able to measure at the time.
China doesn’t have time zones, the whole country is on Beijing time. For a while it was divided up, but when the PRC became a thing in the 50s it decided to promote unity by having one time zone. Beijing is in the east. Xinjiang, to the west, should really be about two hours behind according to the sun, and most people do run their lives on Xinjiang time, they open their shops later than in Beijing and so on, they just name the times in Beijing time. Except the Uyghurs often talk amongst themselves in Xinjiang time, and switch to Beijing time when talking to Han Chinese. What with state surveillance of phones, having your phone set to Xinjiang time isn’t officially illegal but it’s a “you might want to look closer at this person” sort of flag. Roman says that having Xinjiang run on Beijing time instead of solar time is “denying reality”, and is not surprised it goes along with denying human rights.
Daylight saving time is controversial. People think it was to help farmers, but farmers rise with the sun whatever the time says. In fact it was because a house builder was going for walks and thought it was a shame people were missing out on the daylight. He wrote a pamphlet and it came up before parliament a few times but kept getting rejected. Not long after he died, Germany implemented DST during WWI, and then Britain followed. The advantage was saving energy, less fuel needed to heat and light homes. (Or maybe that was specifically the WWII bit later, and the advantage here was different?) Some people think we should actually be on DST year-round, and double-DST during Summer. Roman thinks this sounds like a nice plan. (He apparently does not consider it to be denying reality?) This has been floated in the UK. It hasn’t taken off partly because Scotland doesn’t like the idea and it would make them more likely to become independent, and also apparently Jacob Rees-Mogg attached a rider making Somerset time 15 minutes off the rest of the UK. He fully admits he’s being ridiculous and just trying to make the bill less likely to pass. Also, it was tried during WWII, and people accepted it as a wartime measure but didn’t like it, the dark mornings were crap.
99% Invisible: Matters of Time
A few short stories on the subject of time.
Standardized time across a whole country came into existence with train networks. It was important for these because people needed to know when the train would be there to catch it, and also being a few minutes off could cause crashes. They’d get someone with a good watch to sync it up in London, then travel around the network and have station operators sync their clocks from the watch. A clock on the side of the Bristol Corn Exchange still has both London and Bristol time, 12 minutes apart.
When industrialization started to become a thing, people would have to get up early before dawn to go to their shift, but didn’t have alarm clocks yet. (Got the vague impression this was related to standardized time, and I could see that being related, but it also seems unnecessary.) So there’d be knockers-up, who went around waking people. No good to knock on the door, that could wake neighbors too (either annoying them or giving them a service for free). A long cane could rap directly on their bedroom window, or at least one person used a pea-shooter. Not a great wage, a lot of them were older women who couldn’t do much physical labor any more. Also constables with the night shift would often moonlight as knockers-up, and the constable first told about the first Jack the Ripper victim was too busy doing that to come look at the body at first. The last one retired only in the early 70s. Vaguely related, there was at least one report in the ripper case saying things like “at 6:19… six minutes later” which is just way more precise than people would have been able to measure at the time.
China doesn’t have time zones, the whole country is on Beijing time. For a while it was divided up, but when the PRC became a thing in the 50s it decided to promote unity by having one time zone. Beijing is in the east. Xinjiang, to the west, should really be about two hours behind according to the sun, and most people do run their lives on Xinjiang time, they open their shops later than in Beijing and so on, they just name the times in Beijing time. Except the Uyghurs often talk amongst themselves in Xinjiang time, and switch to Beijing time when talking to Han Chinese. What with state surveillance of phones, having your phone set to Xinjiang time isn’t officially illegal but it’s a “you might want to look closer at this person” sort of flag. Roman says that having Xinjiang run on Beijing time instead of solar time is “denying reality”, and is not surprised it goes along with denying human rights.
Daylight saving time is controversial. People think it was to help farmers, but farmers rise with the sun whatever the time says. In fact it was because a house builder was going for walks and thought it was a shame people were missing out on the daylight. He wrote a pamphlet and it came up before parliament a few times but kept getting rejected. Not long after he died, Germany implemented DST during WWI, and then Britain followed. The advantage was saving energy, less fuel needed to heat and light homes. (Or maybe that was specifically the WWII bit later, and the advantage here was different?) Some people think we should actually be on DST year-round, and double-DST during Summer. Roman thinks this sounds like a nice plan. (He apparently does not consider it to be denying reality?) This has been floated in the UK. It hasn’t taken off partly because Scotland doesn’t like the idea and it would make them more likely to become independent, and also apparently Jacob Rees-Mogg attached a rider making Somerset time 15 minutes off the rest of the UK. He fully admits he’s being ridiculous and just trying to make the bill less likely to pass. Also, it was tried during WWII, and people accepted it as a wartime measure but didn’t like it, the dark mornings were crap.