Delegates from twenty-five nations met in Washington in October 1884 to agree on a common global reference system for longitude and time, choosing the meridian through Greenwich, England as the prime meridian. The conference laid the conceptual groundwork for the worldwide system of standard time zones that railways, shipping lines, and telegraph operators adopted over the following decades. Canadian railway engineer Sandford Fleming, part of the Canadian delegation, was among the strongest advocates for standardized time, having proposed a system of worldwide time zones in the 1870s. Widespread practical adoption of standard time zones by national governments took additional years and, in some countries, decades.
Relevance to Trade History
A shared global time standard let railway timetables, shipping schedules, and telegraph message logs synchronize across borders, removing a major source of confusion in coordinating long-distance trade.
Read the full story in our article The Standardization of Time and International Commerce.
Source: Library of Congress. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.