On the Clock: A (Brief) History of Time
Lithograph, 1918. (Library of Congress)
In 1883, the a coalition of railroad officials carved the continental U.S. into five time zones, introducing Americans to the idea of “standard time.” Twenty five years later, the revolutionary idea was codified into law, with the 1918 Standard Time Act.
In this episode, we’ll look at the changing ways Americans have experienced the 24-hour day — from pre-industrial times right on up through today’s era of time-shifted media. We’ll explore the impact of those powerful Gilded Age railroads, and look the role of economic forces in shaping America’s relationship with the clock. We’ll also explore how people have experienced the rhythm of night and day — and why the advent of electric lighting changed that rhythm forever. Finally, is unlimited time always a good thing? We take a loving look at basketball’s shot clock.
Guests Include:
- Roger Ekirch, Virginia Tech, on 19th century Americans’ changing relationship with night
- Michael O’Malley, George Mason University, on how Gilded Age railroad officials standardized time across the country
Further Exploration
Listen to individual show segments.
Have a look at our list of outside sources, and check out an extended version of Peter’s conversation with Roger Ekirch. (If you have enough time, that is.)
Even More
Read the listener discussion that helped to shape the show.
Check out the music used in this show.
The most recent battle over time may have been the one in Alaska during the 1970′s and 1980′s. Most people don’t realize how vast Alaska is, but the state covers four time zones — the same as the Lower 48 does.
QuoteMost of that vast geography is empty space, sprinkled with little deposits of humanity; and in many of those smaller areas, time is of little interest for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, except for perhaps a mail plane or maybe one of the state ferries, schedules aren’t important — and if the weather gets bad, the planes are going to be grounded anyway. Getting to “the office” is of such little importance that getting there by a specific time is of little concern.
The other main reason time is measured differently in Alaska is becausee of the vast differences in daylight depending on the season. In most parts of Alaska during the summer, it never gets darker than early twilight; in winter, one gets to “the office” or school before the sun comes up and leaves after the sun goes down. Above the Arctic Circle, the sun at the height of the season either never goes down or never comes up, depending.
In the populated parts of Alaska, however, time started to mean a lot in the 1970′s, at least indirectly tied to the time the state started to be a major oil producer. The economy was in boom times, and there was a direct connection between commercial interests and government business. The problems became increasingly important because the state capital in Juneau was on Pacific Time, while the two largest cities in the state, Anchorage and Fairbanks, were two hours later on the same time zone as Hawaii.
This meant that people in Juneau were at work two hours before those in Anchorage or Fairbanks, and went home two hours earlier, leaving just a four-hour window to get any normal work or communication accomplished — people in Juneau had to twiddle their thumbs waiting the two hours to call an office “Up North” and anyone trying to reach Juneau in the late afternoon — good luck. Communicating with Washington D.C. during work hours was even more of a problem, four or six hours earlier depending on location.
This was particularly grating to business people in Anchorage trying to communicate with legislators or regulatory agencies based in Juneau. Business people really were frustrated and ticked off — and the state’s largest newspaper at the time, the Anchorage Times, saw this as a perfect issue to sell newspapers and to try to move the state capital, a battle fought in several engagements over two decades. Up North, Juneau became a dirty word. In addition to the “capital move” issue, efforts were made to try to change Juneau to Anchorage/Hawaii time, which didn’t make sense to anybody in Juneau.
While the two-hour time difference also was frustrating to state employees (such as myself at the time) trying to communicate with those Up North, most of those in Juneau and the rest of Southeast Alaska really didn’t care to make such a change. Most of Southeast Alaska commerce and recreation travel was much more directly tied to Seattle, and being on Pacific time was quite nice — people got to the office at the same time we did. Air and water travel and transport was easy to calculate because time was the same. If Anchorage people were so upset, let them change to Pacific time.
A solution that may seem simple now, took the election of a new state governor to resolve. In short order, Gov. Bill Sheffield moved for a split decision, moving most of Alaska an hour back, and Juneau time an hour forward — putting them all on the same time zone.
Now was that so hard?
The first and second sleep sounds very much like my winter nights when the house depended on adding wood to the fire to stay warm.
QuoteTerrific program–it reminded me that when I was growing up, in a small town in New Jersey, there was a noon whistle. Not that we didn’t have watches and clocks, but it was a town tradition, from when I don’t know. Living on the last street in town, we could hear not only the Demarest whistle, but the Cresskill one, too. They were always a few seconds apart. My memory is romantic, of liking to hear the whistle, maybe some kind of affirmation that all things were in order. But, as I think more about it, there were days when it made you jump in surprise, and not happily.
On another note, you played a song with the lyric, “Time is a train, some say you can’t get off…” and I’d like to know who performed it!
Thanks for consistently interesting and enlightening topics!
QuoteMaggie — That’s “Time is a Train” by the Perpetual Drifters. And on that note, we’ve just posted a listing of all the music used in the show (under “Further Exploration” above) — you can find a link to the album there. Thanks for the kind words!
QuoteThe segment on first and second sleep BLEW MY MIND. Suddenly monks having a prayer service in the middle of the night makes perfect sense. They were awake then anyway, and praying would keep them from sin! I feel like I need to reevaluate all the literature I’ve ever read; the witching hour is an entirely different thing if people were usually awake then!
QuoteThe law regarding the regulation of time zones is in Title 49 Part 71 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations and the agency responsible for it is the Department of Transportation. As it happens, the rules for time zones was amended today, March 13, 2013.
If you have ever wondered how it is that we are compelled to change the clocks to daylight savings time as a nation, the answer is The Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S.C. 260a(a)), as amended. that law, passed by Congress, requires “that the standard time of each State observing Daylight Saving Time shall be advanced 1 hour beginning at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March of each year and ending at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November. This advanced time shall be the standard time of each zone during such period.”
One of the interesting features of this Act is that it authorizes a State that lies within two or more time zones may either exempt the entire area of the State or either portion of the State that lies within a time zone. By this method, a State (other than Alaska with three time zones as described in another posting) can put itself entirely within one time zone by exempting one section but not the other from daylight savings time.
Section 1 of the Standard Time Act, as amended by section 4 of the Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S.C. 261) prescribes the geographic limits of each of the nine standard time zones. The time zones established by the Standard Time Zone Act, (as amended) are Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, Hawaii-Aleutian, Samoa, and Chamorro.
For those who want to know more, you can find out a lot by going to http://www.regulations.gov and looking at Docket No. DOT-OST-2012-0159.
Or you can read all about it in today’s Federal Register Volume 78, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 13, 2013) pages 15883-15885 “Standard Time Zone Boundaries” at the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
QuoteHere are some interesting responses to proposed time changes in the late 1960s from Indiana politicians. http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=all&CISOBOX1=time&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOROOT=%2FMunDelFilms
QuoteNot quite in the bailiwick of American time, but I wanted to expand on an area the History Guys touched upon: the concept of God’s time – and how that idea was used historically to compartmentalize Jewish populations and channel their agency, and how that is reflected in modern attitudes about time, Jewish culture, and right vs. wrong productivity.
The idea that all Time is God’s time and we are graced to exist within it has long roots stretching far back in history. However, during the medieval period, antisemitism in England (and elsewhere in medieval Europe) gave rise to laws severely restricting Jewish people from owning land. As such, they were forced to find other means to support themselves, often turning to commerce or professions.
One of those permitted areas was in banking, especially in lending, because of the idea of “usury”, or accruing interest on money over time. A Christian would be putting his soul at risk by capitalizing from lending, as that was using God’s purview- Time- for profit. But as “unbelievers”, Jewish souls were already *willingly* in spiritual peril (according to the medieval Christian concept of sin), so it was allowed for them to deal in the ambiguous trade of money-lending.
It was a market necessity, really, to have a population of “less thans” doing the spiritual dirty work, so banking was essentially forced on Jewish peoples until such time as Christianity became more secularized and dropped the stigma of God’s Time in favor of capitalism and changing views over the ownership and passage of time. But the hateful connotations of usury and sin and “immoral” financial craftiness have sadly dogged Jewish cultures wherever they have gone.
There’s really so much that can be said about the marginalization of Jewish populations within medieval Europe, and how prejudices shaped the cultural paths they walked, and how “mainstream” Europe was symbiotically dependent on them even though they found it distasteful. Working with money has always been denoted with an unsavory cultural tinge because of the knowledge imbalance, potential predatory nature, and lack of sweat and tangible product, but that an entire culture was co-opted to do spiritual dirty work because of such an abstract concept as “Time” is incredible. It is amazing how much the legacy of medieval history trails us today in our perceptions of culture, religion, and our relationship to Time.
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