Time Zones

Have you ever wondered about a magical secret the world keeps? Imagine you are eating your breakfast while the sun shines brightly in your window. At that very same moment, a friend on the other side of the world is snuggled in bed, dreaming under a starry, dark sky. It’s a sunny morning for you, but a sleepy night for them. This is the sunny puzzle. Long ago, this puzzle made things tricky. If you wanted to send a message to your far-away friend, you had to guess if they were awake or asleep. People would look up at the sun in their own town to decide what time it was. This meant every single town had its own special time. It was like everyone had their own secret clock, and nobody’s clock matched. This big, sunny puzzle made people scratch their heads and wonder how they could ever feel close to friends who lived where the sun and moon played by different rules.

Then, something exciting and fast came along: trains. Whoosh. These amazing machines could travel from town to town quicker than ever before. But my sunny puzzle turned into a great big train tangle. Imagine a train conductor trying to make a schedule. He would leave one town at noon, but when he arrived at the next town just a little while later, their clocks might say it was 12:15 PM. The town after that might say it was 12:05 PM. It was chaos. People were always missing their trains, and train conductors had headaches trying to figure out all the different times. One day, a very clever man from Scotland named Sir Sandford Fleming got very frustrated. He missed his train in Ireland in 1876 because the schedule was so confusing. He thought, 'This is silly. There must be a better way.' He sat down and had a brilliant idea. What if the whole world was sliced up like a big, juicy orange? Each slice would have the very same time. That way, everyone in that slice, or 'zone', would know exactly what time it was for everyone else. And that amazing idea was how I was born. I am Standard Time.

Today, my job is more important than ever. I help you know if it’s a good time to video call your grandma who lives across the ocean. I help pilots fly their big airplanes safely across the sky, making sure they know what time they will land. When you want to watch a special cartoon that is showing all over the world at the same moment, I make sure everyone's television turns on at the right time. I am the reason you and a friend in another country can play an online game together and start at the same time. You can’t see me, but I am like invisible lines that wrap the whole world in a big, organized hug. I am Standard Time, and I help keep everyone connected, no matter how far apart they are.