Anyone who has struggled to schedule a conference call across multiple time zones should pity the poor residents of Indiana. For decades, the Midwestern US state has been in flux over whether to observe Central or Eastern time. Some counties even switched time zones twice in as many years during the mid-2000s.
This situation must be particularly baffling to the people of India and China, whose countries span thousands of miles yet obey a single time zone — whatever the cost to their citizens’ Circadian rhythms.
Today’s time zones are a 19th-century invention, driven by railway engineers’ desire to harmonise schedules across states and countries. Now that we travel at internet speed, the system is breaking down.
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