Universal time

The measurement of time before the coming of the railways was a local matter with towns and cities establishing their own "time zones". There was little coordination of times between cities or regions in Canada or elsewhere in the world. Train travel revealed the shortcomings of this arrangement for it quickly led to problems related to the scheduling of arrivals and departures from different cities. A Canadian engineer, Sandford Fleming, proposed a coordinated world-wide time system at a meeting in Toronto of the Royal Canadian Institute in 1879. His idea was accepted at the International Meridian Conference of 1884

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