Time Vs Standard Time

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People check the time throughout the day, every day, making time essential to lives. The intrinsic importance of time is twofold: biologically people have an internal clock to regulate the most basic behaviors like breathing, sleeping, and blinking, and socially, time regulates daily lives like communication, farming, and business keeping. In fact, Eviatar Zerubavel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, argues that standard time is one of the “most essential” elements of the “social world”; social life is made possible with the ability to relate time (Zerubavel 2). Therefore, any change in the perception of time marks modification in thinking or an alteration to the social fabric. Throughout history perceived time has changed: sundials …show more content…

The transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, known as the industrial revolution, began a new era of increased productivity and higher standards of living for most. The innovations from the industrial revolution and the necessity to transport raw materials to factories and finished products to other parts of the country helped stimulate the transportation revolution. The transportation revolution transformed American society, linking local and regional markets and creating a national economy. (Kennedy 304). Time, however, was still reflective of an economy based on small community markets. Therefore, the leaders of industry agreed time would have to change; uniform time would increase efficiency the benefits of such a system “would accrue to navigation, railroad interests, newspaper dispatching, telegraphic communications of all kinds” (Smith 31). For example, railroad companies use to conduct their business on a specified time that would be published in a time table while all other businesses of an area would be conducted on local mean solar time, so at many railroad stations multiple times would be displayed. Because of this disconnect between the corporations and the consumers, many were confused and perplexed by the system (Schott …show more content…

Before the Civil War in 1840, 10.8 percent of the population lived in cities, but that number rose to 25.7 by 1870 (U.S. Census Bureau 15). Because urban areas grew, producerism changed to consumerism. Heralding an age of consumption, department stores attracted middle-class shopper, and the appealing emporiums exhibited a cultural shift away from the values of thrift to the conveniences of shopping. In order to get products to these megalopolises, railroads had to connect these areas. Hoping to get materials from one area to another efficiently and decrease the complexity of the system, railroads soon switched from mean local time to Standard Time. The shift occurred smoothly and quickly for most railroads; the few roads that hesitated the system by the end of 1883. Not only did railroads change, most of the country accepted the new time (Riegel 87). When the railroads were outlining their plan, they hoped “that by the adoption of this system all necessity for translating railroad time into local time will be avoided, it being a fact that such translations are not now made at any city where all roads run by the same standard” (American Metrological Society 41). Most city officials and residents followed such standards by collaborating,

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