On 08/07/2011 09:38 PM, m II wrote:
dave wrote:

To make things more "normal" to humans, who seem to like "Noon" to be
when the sun is "straight up", the four "time zones" "Eastern",
"Central", "Mountain", and "Pacific" were established and the standard
time in these zones, "adjusted" so as to be an hour different east to
west, keeping "noon" close to where it should occur in the day as the
sun passed overhead.


They conveniently forgot to mention it was a Canadian, Sandford Fleming,
who invented standard time.



The point lost completely here is that once we got instant
communications via telegraph the sundial as an instrument of government
was finished. It was on shaky grounds already because of trains.