The timezones are a formalization of existing practice, the way modern Metrication is a formalisation of practices which date back to early Weights And Measures laws.
In both cases people didn't wake up one day and from scratch invent the present sophisticated systems, they iterated, once upon a time the kilo was roughly "this much", by the 19th century it was a platinum iridium model object (the "international prototype kilogram"), today it's defined in terms of the measured constants of our universe.
Once upon a time midday was whenever the sun is directly overhead, people iterated, fast transport such as railways led to the use of standardized clocks and gradually there's a "standard" time agreed over whole regions or nations so that midday is whenever that standard says it is.
The timezones just codify and structure this existing practice. If you tell the people of Kyoto that midday ought to be eight minutes earlier than they've been having it so as to line up with a Japan-wide national time system, that's a minor annoyance. But if everybody in the world "standardized" on UTC that's eight hours different, I repeatedly tried to work out what happens, I kept getting muddled, I suspect residents experiencing this would fare little better. No.
The timezones are a formalization of existing practice, the way modern Metrication is a formalisation of practices which date back to early Weights And Measures laws.
In both cases people didn't wake up one day and from scratch invent the present sophisticated systems, they iterated, once upon a time the kilo was roughly "this much", by the 19th century it was a platinum iridium model object (the "international prototype kilogram"), today it's defined in terms of the measured constants of our universe.
Once upon a time midday was whenever the sun is directly overhead, people iterated, fast transport such as railways led to the use of standardized clocks and gradually there's a "standard" time agreed over whole regions or nations so that midday is whenever that standard says it is.
The timezones just codify and structure this existing practice. If you tell the people of Kyoto that midday ought to be eight minutes earlier than they've been having it so as to line up with a Japan-wide national time system, that's a minor annoyance. But if everybody in the world "standardized" on UTC that's eight hours different, I repeatedly tried to work out what happens, I kept getting muddled, I suspect residents experiencing this would fare little better. No.