Time Zones and "A Scamper Through America"

I was working on a study guide for A Little History of the United States and returned to an entertaining volume published by an English traveler, T. S. Hudson, A Scamper Through America or, Fifteen Thousand Miles of Ocean and Continent in Sixty Days. (Click here to read the whole thing on Google Books.) Hudson was traveling in 1882, when times were still calculated locally, noon being when the sun was highest in the sky. Hudson directly encountered the problems that this system entailed for railroads:

---

    A great source of inconvenience in traveling is what appears to a stranger to be the foolish arrangement of clocks. An attempt is made by every large place to use solar time, hence trains are made to run as nearly as possible to the time of the sun. In the forty hours’ ride now commenced we had three “times”—Washington, Vincennes, and St. Louis. It became absolutely indispensable to carry with our watches a reconciliation card with little dials showing the hour at a dozen different places when noon at New York. To show the absurdity to which the subdivision is carried—it is one hour’s ride between Baltimore and Washington, and the clocks are three minutes different, so that the journey one way is apparently six minutes longer than the other. We heard it stated that business could be conveniently carried on if there were three standard times—say New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco. The only way to be certain of catching a train is always to be at the station very early, particularly if you have luggage. There is a great deal of delay about “checking” the latter, and there is needless time wasted at both ends; but the system is very safe…Traveling trunks must be strongly made, as the fellows who handle them are called “smashers,” and well they earn their appellation.
    The time-tables provided by each line contain, within a highly coloured wrapper, the times, distances, fares and altitudes on one side; and on the other a map showing the particular rail road and its connections. The latter is very useful; a trifling fault, when it is known, being that the company’s own line, marked by a thick black band across the map, is invariably shown to be as nearly as possible as the crow flies, whereas competing routes appear to be more devious than they actually are.”

---

Hudson notes speculation that the nation might be divided into three time zones, with clocks set to New York, St. Louis and San Francisco’s local noon. In fact, only a year later the United States adopted its four zones, in November 1883.
 
These travel accounts are great fun to read, and British travelers of the era published more than a few. For additional information, see “The American West through British Eyes, 1865-1900.”