The man who first proposed 24 time zones that would be in 15 degrees geographic longitude each.

As railways expanded through America and elsewhere, it became evident that people had to deal with different times as each city had its own solar time. The railway travelers were puzzled about which time to set in a moving train.  Should they set time according to the local time of the place from where they had departed, or should they set time according to the time at the station of their destination? 

By the mid-nineteenth century, this conundrum had been partly resolved as uniform timing was introduced. Now the time at the main office of the rail company or the capital city of the land would be considered as the standard time. However, this still didn’t solve the problem of border cities. For example, in Geneva, Switzerland, people had three different time zones to keep track of. One was for all places within Switzerland, one was for trains to France, and another was the local time in Geneva. 

 The above situation fueled the imagination of watchmakers who developed watches showing time in multiple places. However, these watches were not a commercial success.

A standard world system of the time was yet to be created. All that changed on one evening in June 1876 as Canadian railway engineer Sandford Fleming missed his train in the Irish town of Bundoran. He had made the mistake of reading 5:35 AM as 5:35 PM and thus waiting for a non-existent train. 

After this experience, he became deeply engaged in time division and published an essay called “Terrestrial Time.”  In this essay, he put forth several ideas about how time should be interpreted.  

One of the most important recommendations was to count the hours from 1 to 24 instead of 1 to 12 as was being done at the time.  Sandford Fleming also suggested a worldwide time system that would be independent of sunny or dark conditions. He also proposed the 24 time zones which would be in 15 degrees geographic longitude each. These and other suggestions laid the foundations of what we know as the world time today.