What are 24-Hour Clocks?
The 24-hour clock is a timekeeping system that counts twenty-four
hours from midnight to midnight, and the international standard
notation of time (ISO 8601) is based on this format. It’s the most
popular form of timekeeping in the world and is sometime called
military time (which is wrong), contential time, and (my favorite)
railway time.
Railway time became a thing because in the beginning of the 19th
century, time was localized determined by the sun. So when
visitors arrived in towns, they’d jump down from their horses and
adjust their timepiece from the local church. Simpler times, man.
Simpler times.
Then trains zipped through London into Europe and turned
everything upside down. Think about it. You bought this ticket
that will apparently strap you to this smoke-filled, thunder
bullet and send you to London without a horse. Yea right. But then
it happens. This man blows his whistle, you jump down from the
train, adjust your watch from the nearest church, but now your 10
minutes ahead of Bristol. However, your iron horse bullet thing is
heading back to another town in a few hours but is it the other
town’s time? So will you set your watch to Bristol time, the new
town’s time, or do you use London’s time because that’s where your
iron train horse bullet resides?
There was no structure and the difference in local times really
became a problem. So most people reluctantly accepted train
timestables just to dull their headache.
Maybe that was a bit of a rant, but if you’d like to learn more, I
learned interesting facts and reasons for 24h time (candidly with
far better history than I explained) in the ebook
Time: A brief history of the 24-hour clock
by Pete Boardman