This episode was a rebroadcast from a very early one in the series. It’s called “time.” The podcast describes how “railroad time” fundamentally shaped a town in Ohio.
Back in the late 1800s, people kept time on a personal level. That is, everyone had their own personal pocket watch, maybe a clock at home or at their place of work or business. If someone’s clock said 2:30 and someone else’s clock said 2:35, it didn’t really matter that much. This all changed when the railroad came in. The railroad imposed a strict and universal time system on the town in order to run a train schedule. So if you’re trying to catch a 12pm train, but your clock is five minutes fast, that’s a problem. The advent of the railroad imposed the need for uniformity of people’s clocks and watches.
An interesting story from this is how the Railroad actually changed the time of “noon” in this town from the time approximating the moment at which the sun was directly overhead to a moment about twenty minutes after that. They effectively “moved” time.
Book Summaries. Less than 272 words. 