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World Time Zones.

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What is a Timezone and why do we have them?

The short answer is that a Timezone is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a ‘zone’ within which time is standardised. So two towns or cities within the same timezone work on the same clock, which makes pretty much every aspect of life much simpler and easier to organise. Of course different time zones will work on different times, but that can be planned for.

For the long answer, we need to go back through history: since pretty much the dawn of civilization right up until the late 19th century, timekeeping was a strictly local affair. Each town or village would set their clocks at sun rise and people would attempt to sync their lives with daylight. This works fine if you never leave your local area, and most people throughout history never did, but as the world grew more and more interconnected it became more and more obvious that something better needed to be implemented.

Enter Canadian researcher Sir Sandford Fleming, in 1878 he came up with an alternative that divided the world up equally into 24 time zones around the world. 24 zones for 24 hours in a day. This is more or less the birth of the modern time zones system, although they have changed and warped – mostly based on political whims – since they were first introduced by Sir Fleming.

Time Zone Abbreviations

A list of the most popular time zone abbreviations, including details of the region and UTC offset.

Time Zone Abbreviations

A list of the most popular time zone abbreviations, including details of the region and UTC offset.

Time Zone Abbreviations

A list of the most popular time zone abbreviations, including details of the region and UTC offset.