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Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class
Episode: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Time Zones
Description: Humans have understood how to calculate the length of a day pretty accurately for a long time. But there wasn’t a standard way to approach time on a global scale until the late 19th century, and happened because of railroads. Research: “INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD AT WASHINGTON FOR THE PURPOSE OF FIXING A PRIME MERIDIAN AND A UNIVERSAL DAY.” (Protocols of the Proceedings.” October 1884. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17759/17759-h/17759-h.htm Fleming, Sandford. “Terrestrial time: a memoir.” 1876. Digitized: https://archive.org/details/cihm_06112/page/n17/mode/2up Fleming, Sandford. “Papers on time-reckoning and the selection of a prime mer...