The passage below is adapted from an article about the history of standardized timekeeping.
Paragraph 1 (lines 1-8):
Historically, every town kept its own local time based on the sun's position, leading to hundreds of local times across a single country. This system worked fine when travel was slow, but the rapid expansion of railroads in the mid-nineteenth century created scheduling chaos. Trains moving between cities faced conflicting arrival and departure times at every station. A single uniform standard was desperately needed to prevent train collisions and coordinate travel schedules.
Paragraph 2 (lines 9-16):
In response to this confusion, Sir Sandford Fleming proposed a system of twenty-four standard time zones, each spaced fifteen degrees of longitude apart. Fleming suggested that the entire world be divided into these zones, with all clocks within a single zone synchronized to the same hour. His proposal was initially adopted by major railway companies, who implemented four standard time zones in North America to organize their routes.
Paragraph 3 (lines 17-24):
To make this regional system global, representatives from twenty-five nations gathered at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., in 1884. The delegates selected Greenwich, England, as the prime meridian, establishing it as the zero-degree point of longitude. This decision allowed the creation of a unified global time system, anchoring the world’s twenty-four time zones to a single, universally recognized starting point.
Match each paragraph of the passage with its primary main idea.
- Paragraph 1 (lines 1-8)The introduction of railroad travel created a critical need for standardized timekeeping.
- Paragraph 2 (lines 9-16)The proposed solution divided the globe into twenty-four distinct regional time zones.
- Paragraph 3 (lines 17-24)An international conference established a prime meridian to create a unified global time system.