What time is it where you are?

I must hear the phrase “What time is it where you are?” at least once a week. In my company of 600 people, we have offices in 3 continents and 9 time zones (including our two offshore teams, one in Bulgaria, the other in India).

Counting the hours between the time zones isn’t that difficult; it is usually daylight saving time or just the way we read the clock (time notation) which gets us mixed up.

Time zones

The concept of dividing the world up into 24 time zones, each exactly 15 degrees of latitude, was first proposed in 1879 by Sir Sanford Fleming. With the inventions of the railroad and the telegraph, there needed to be a standard time (which could be communicated by wire) to keep the long distance trains running on time. Before that, every locality basically set the town hall clock however they wanted to. The first thing you did when arriving in a town was to check your watch and adjust accordingly.

Fleming’s concept of 24 time zones was logical, but it didn’t take country borders into account. Time zones can be quite political. For example, before World War II, France was in the same time zone as the UK. But after the German’s invaded, they set the clocks in France to match those in Germany. For whatever reason, France never moved the hour back. Today we have 39 time zones in the world.

For the most part, adjacent time zones are 1 hour apart, but there are a number of regions in the world with 30 minute deviations (including parts of Australia, India, Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela) and even a few with 15 minute deviations ( Nepal and the Chatham Islands). Amazingly, the whole country of China uses one time zone.

Daylight saving time (DST)

Daylight saving time (DST) was first introduced in the US in 1916 as an energy savings measure. Since then, the concept has been adopted by a number of countries (including backwards DST in the southern hemisphere). When it comes to DST there are absolutely no standards. Almost all countries of the world have had it at some time, but rules to how it is applied can be very local and are changed frequently. (Please refer to Wiki for a detailed overview of Daylight saving time around the world.) For those of us involved in international business, the results can be quite confusing; during spring and fall it is difficult to know what time it is somewhere else in the world. Here are a few examples.

Many of my business partners work in the eastern time zone of the US. The time difference between us (I am in Germany) is usually 6 hours. Except when Germany has switched the clocks forward/backward and the US has not yet done the same. There are always a few weeks in the year where the time difference is 5 or 7 hours, depending. That’s why we end up asking “What time is it where you are?”

Every now and again I need to speak with a colleague in Melbourne. Some states in Australia use backwards DST, that is they “spring forward, fall back” just like in the northern hemisphere, but their spring happens to be in September and their fall in March. As a result, the time difference between Germany and Australia is either 8 or 10 hours.

Time notation: a.m./p.m. versus 24 hour

The use of a.m. and p.m. to differentiate between morning and afternoon once again seem to be a phenomenon of “all English-speaking countries”. Pretty much the rest of the world uses 24 hour notation or what the US calls “military time”. Informally, people everywhere seem to default to 12 hour notation, but formal communications are exclusively in 24 hour.

For non-native English speakers the only difficulty with adjusting to a.m. and p.m. is midday and midnight. I often get asked, “Is 12 pm lunchtime or midnight?” (Answer: lunchtime.)

As an American who grew up with a.m. and p.m., it took me a long time to feel comfortable with 24 hour time notation. Besides always doing the math (”Let’s see, 16 minus 12 is… Oh, it’s 4 o’clock!”) I think I had this superstition about having a 13 o’clock.

Many countries/languages have different ways to express various units of time. For example, in German you can refer to 8:45 as either “quarter to nine” or “three-quarters nine”. 8:30 is referred to as “half nine” which is especially confusing when our UK colleagues say “half nine” and mean 9:30.

It’s no wonder we need to ask “What time is it where you are?” all the time!