For centuries towns and countries around the world had their own "local time" or sundial time and when railroads were built across the United States that presented a problem. Operators of the new railroad lines realized that a new time plan was needed in order for a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals. When traveling east or west a person would have to change their watch one minutes every twelve miles. Since every city used a different time standard there were over 300 local times to chose from. The railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was a partial and confusing solution to the problem.

In 1883, the railroads convinced the United States (and Canada) to set standard time zones and four zones were selected for the United States and named Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific Time Zones. On November 18, 1883, authorities and railroad managers reset their clocks to the time zones they were assigned. A year later the International Meridian Conference agreed to establish 24 time zones to cover the earth.

Although the standards and zones were set by the federal government it was years before many cities and people actually used the new time. Detroit kept "local time" until 1900 when the city council decreed that clocks should be put back 28 minutes to Central Time Zone. Half of the city obeyed and half refused causing confusion, so the city reverted to local or sun time. Finally, in 1905 Central Standard Time was adopted by Detroit.

Standard time did not become a federal law until 1918 and only then did all cities and citizens change to standard time. Time zone boundaries have changed greatly since their original introduction and changes still occasionally occur. The Department of Transportation oversees time zones and approves any zone changes. Most of the time zones have drifted westward to extend the evening sunshine. If a time zone can be moved far enough to place a city in a different time zone they can get one more hour of sun in the evening.

I won't write about Daylight Savings Time and all the local and state laws and fights over when and where DST is honored. But I want to write about moving the time zone or I want to go back to local time.

I am a night owl and about fifteen years of my career I worked second shift and often worked all night repairing large computer problems. I love night time, I'm wide awake at night, and I think my humble IQ increases about 10 points between 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. This winter we have been in a city that has sunsets as early as 4:00 p.m. and by 4:30 p.m. a flashlight is needed to walk around the campground.

So here is my plan to get back that lost sunshine. When the sun drops behind the horizon I will set my clocks (I haven't worn a watch since 1996) to 9:00 p.m. and establish that as "my" local time. Yeah, I know I'll lose morning sunshine, but those are the best hours for sleeping and I don't care for worms (like the early bird gets the worm). So my winter's local time will have the sunrise at 10:00 a.m and the sunset at 9:00 p.m. I'm retired and the government can't make me live by a Standard Time.