Time and Time Zones - Internet Time, Technical Timing, E-commerce And Time Zones, Time Zone Solutions

On the surface, the concept of time may seem relatively simple and straightforward. Anyone who interacts with other individuals or organizations relies heavily on time to manage daily activities. People constantly complain that they don't have enough of it and continually save it, waste it, and try to find more of it. Without clocks, time frames, and time zones, the fabric of organization and structure that holds the world together would quickly unravel. If the world did not share a similar definition of time, coordinating activities and making arrangements (such as the delivery of goods) would become extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Webster's College Dictionary defines time as "the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another." Time corresponds to measurable real-world phenomena. For example, the movement of the Earth around the Sun signifies one year, one revolution of the Earth around its axis signifies one day, and so on. However, because it can only be defined through measurement, time is not absolute according to Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity. To confuse matters further, some scientists disagree as to whether time itself really exists.

U.S. cities relied on the Sun to set time until the late 19th century. At that time, the railroad industry spearheaded the development of time zones to prevent train collisions and to better manage their schedules. Because of factory production schedules, the Industrial Revolution also made it important for the public to have access to more precise time measurements, which allowed them to show up for work at specific points in time. Standard Time was developed in 1884 to create uniform time standard across the globe. This led to the creation of 24 different international time zones. In theory, these regions are spaced longitudinally at 15 degrees, causing time to vary by one hour in each successive zone from a meridian running through Greenwich, England. This is the basis of Universal Time or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Based on political factors and other issues, the exact points at which time zones end and begin can vary in certain areas of the world.