History and society

In the nineteenth century, many towns kept their own local time, setting their clocks by the position of the sun. As a result, noon in one town could arrive several minutes earlier or later than noon in a town just to the east or west. As railway networks expanded, these small differences made published timetables confusing for passengers and dangerous for train operators. Railway companies therefore began to schedule trains by standard time, and over the following decades many communities allowed a single standard time to ______ the many local times they had once kept.