- Image via Wikipedia
When You Travel, Chances Are You Will Encounter Time Shifts.
Sir Sanford Fleming, a Canadian railroad engineer and visionary, set out the basics of time zones around the world to help his trains keep schedules. Before Fleming’s invention, each train station in each town had its own time based on the overhead sun at noon. Railroad scheduling was next to impossible to decipher.
Fleming proposed every 15 degrees of longitude should all have the same standard time. All lines of longitude pass through the north and south poles. At the equator the 15 degrees covers approximately 1,000 miles. Since the earth’s equator is approximately 24,000 miles in circumference, there are 24 time zones each an hour apart.
Unfortunately the degrees of longitude (every 15 degrees) would bisect states and countries, provinces, states and even towns. One side of the imaginary line was an hour before or after the other side. So deviations had to occur to accommodate the actual ground situation. So time zones can wiggle around and go back and forth to follow borders etc.
Time zones are not simple and international datelines and earth rotation direction aside, they can be quite confusing.
Here are some web sites that may help you get a handle on time zones and changes around the world.
- Time.is has times around the world by location (7 million enough?). It also shows:
- sunrise and sunset times
- time zone details
- latitude and longitude
- details on holidays for the day
- a Wikipedia link.
- Time Ticker indicates the current time when you click on the world map. Specific cities and towns appear in list boxes.
- Time Zone Check Hover your mouse over the world map and you are shown daylight saving time and standard time on two clocks. A third clock reads your computer’s time setting.
- Every Time Zone compares times around the world in a bar graph styles. It shows the date too. Very visual.
- 24 time zones has an interactive world map with yellow dot locations for time zones, shading for night and daylight and the date for each location.
- Daylight Map
shows the dusk and dawn lines as daylight marches around the globe. Clocking locations around the world can be done. The google just the night-time city lights satellite image is there too as well as other features. - World Time Zone gives an overall view of time zone borders around the globe.
Google Earth has time zone information too, but it’s a little more complicated to extract it. Of course Google Earth has so many other information resources for the traveller, the time zones are not its major thrust.
Less intuitive and therefore less useful are:
- Qlock shows times as you hover over a world map. It includes three styles of world view using a google maps base.
- Windows 7 also has the capacity to have several clock images on its interface and each can be programmed for a different time zone. You can keep tabs of the zones you are travelling to or have friends in, etc.
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