USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -With the proliferation of railroads, faster travel became possible across many cities and travelers could sometimes arrive at an earlier local time than the one they had left. Due to this lack of time standardization, schedules on the same tracks often could not be coordinated, resulting in collisions.

Detailed explanation-2: -On November 18, 1883, the railroads moved forward with the adoption of four U.S. time zones, an idea that had been proposed 11 years earlier by Charles Dowd, a Yale-educated school principal. The time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific, are still in place today.

Detailed explanation-3: -Standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads on November 18, 1883. Prior to that, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by a well-known clock (on a church steeple, for example, or in a jeweler’s window).

Detailed explanation-4: -Use of standard time gradually increased because of its obvious practical advantages for communication and travel. Standard time in time zones was not established in U.S. law until the Standard Time Act of 1918 of March 19, 1918, also known as the Calder Act (15 USC 260).