Our Sister Show: This Day In History Class

Holly and Tracy wanted to share a sample of the spinoff of Stuff You Missed in History Class: This Day in History Class. Every day, host Yves Jeffcoat brings listeners a small slice of history in a short-form episode. Today, we offer a sampling from Yves.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey listeners, Happy Sunday. We have a treat for you today. Yeah,
we're giving you a little bit of bonus content from
what is sort of our baby Sister podcast. I know
there's probably a better way to characterize it, uh, This
Day in History Class, which started with Tracy as the
host and now our fabulous colleague Eves Jeff Cote hosts it. Yeah.
Eves I think took it in a direction that was

(00:23):
a lot more thoughtful, uh and just generally lovely than
what I was able to do in the context of
also working on this show. Yea. So if you're not
listening to This Day in History Class, we absolutely think
you should, and we are going to give you a
little taste of it by running one of the short
informative episodes right here. This Day in History Class is
a production of I Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves, and

(00:48):
you're listening to This Day in History Class, a show
that makes time travel a little bit easier. Today, it's no.
The day was November eight three. At noon. North American

(01:10):
Railroads changed to a new time system called Standard Railway Time.
US and Canadian Railway adopted five standardized time zones so
that everyone would run on railroad time. Before this point,
communities had their own local times based on the movement
of the sun. But having all these different local times
caused a lot of confusion. As rail lines became more extensive,

(01:34):
each railroad adopted the time standard of its home city
or another important city on its route. Railroad timetables used
a bunch of different standards and scheduling was a pain.
Local times were a hassle for shippers, train passengers, and
ticket sellers. The multitude of time zones also made things
difficult for people who used and operated telegraphs and telephones.

(01:56):
The need for a new time system was clear. Astronomers
and geophysicists have been calling for standardized time for a while.
In eighteen forty eight, England, Scotland and Wales switched over
to Greenwich Mean time after scientists and mathematician John Herschel
had advocated for standardized time for years. People in North America,

(02:16):
including a principal named Charles F. Dowd and Sanford Fleming,
chief engineer of the Government Railways of Canada, had also
been advocating for a switch to a new time standard
in the US. In Canada, William F. Allen was Secretary
of the General Time Convention, which the railways formed to
coordinate their schedules. He championed the adoption of standard time.

(02:38):
In October of eighteen eighty three, the railroads agreed to
adopt five time zones, inter Colonial Time, Eastern Time, Central Time,
Mountain Time, and Pacific Time. Intercolonial time is now known
as Atlantic Time in Eastern Canada. The time zones were
based on mean sun time on the seventy nine one
o five and one meridians west of Greenwage. They were

(03:02):
one hour apart because fifteen degrees of longitude marks a
one hour difference in solar time. The U. S. Attorney
General issued an edict that said government departments wouldn't adopt
railroad time until they were authorized by Congress to do so.
The new standard railway time system launched at noon on
November eighteen. At that point, train conductors changed their watches

(03:25):
from their railroads times to the new standard times. There
was some opposition to the change, as some people felt
that daylight was being stolen from them, or that the
railroads were trying to go against nature with the new system,
and some thought that the new time system was some
ruse that watchmakers were up to to get business. Some

(03:45):
people were vehemently against the change, like the mayor of Bangor, Maine,
who claimed that the new time was unconstitutional and said
nobody could change the quote immutable laws of Guide. The
change also spurred legal issues. Cities were largely cooperative in
adopting the new standard time, and the press and local
officials approved the switch. The new system make coordinating schedules

(04:10):
much easier, and people began to organize their daily routines
according to standard railway time. This system lasted for thirty
five years until Congress intervened and enacted standard time in
Daylight Saving time in nineteen eighteen. Most of the world
had adopted international time zones by the mid nineteen hundreds.

(04:31):
I'm each Deathcote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. Have a hard
time staying present as you mindlessly scrolled through social media.
Lucky for you were stuck in the past. At t
D I h C podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Our email address is this day at I heart media

(04:54):
dot com. I hope you liked the show. We'll be
back tomorrow with another episode. M hmmm. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.