Every Time Zone Converter (2024)

FAQs

How are there 26 time zones? ›

So, if it's Noon in the West, its 2 p.m. in the East, and the calendar date is the same in all three island groups. This was a sensible arrangement for Kiribati, given the circ*mstances, but it did create the oddity of plus 13 and plus 14 hour time zones, making a world total of 26 hourly time zones, instead of 24.

There are 24 regions (Time Zones) around the world with a time difference of one hour. This system has been adopted internationally by setting the total time difference around the world as 24 hours. Further, Daylight Saving Time (DST) is individually adopted in countries and regions.

By about 1900, almost all inhabited places on Earth had adopted one or another standard time zone, but only some of these used an hourly offset from GMT. It took many decades before all time zones were based on some "standard offset" from GMT/UTC. Today, there are 37 different local times in use.

No country, or part of a country, is 24 hours ahead of any part of the contiguous 48 states of the U.S. However, there are places that are 24 hours ahead of American Samoa (UTC-11) and Hawaii (UTC-10).

Other nations, such as Nepal, use quarter-hour deviations. This means that there are approximately 40 time zones rather than 24.

None of the 50 US states have three time zones. However, there are some states with two time zones. These are: Alaska (Alaska and Hawaii-Aleutian)

Russia has an astonishing 11 time zones stretching across its borders. The closest to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is Kaliningrad time in the Kaliningrad Oblast, at GMT +2 hours, while the furthest is Kamchatka time in the far east, at GMT +5 hours.

However, the whole country observes the same local time. In theory, China could have five time zones, but the country has only one official time zone. In spite of being almost the same size as the continental USA, China has only one official time zone.

Ideally, time zones would be slices of Earth's surface 15 degrees of longitude wide that keep the same time. However, some countries and parts of countries have decided that being within a specific time zone is not preferable and have chosen offsets of 30 minutes or even 45 minutes.

Why is India 30 minutes off? ›

That has largely to do with the politics in each of those places. For example, in New Delhi, India, they found themselves halfway between two meridians, and therefore decided to be 30 minutes between each, as opposed to adopting one time or the other.

You can see that the most extreme time zones are +14 hours at Line Islands (Kiribati), and -12 hours in and around Baker Islands (US). Therefore, the maximum possible difference between times on Earth is 26 hours. That means that at 11:00 PM of a Monday in Baker Island, it is 1:00 AM of a Wednesday in Line Islands.

Sir Sanford Fleming, who worked as an engineer for Canadian railways, knew this problem firsthand when he missed a train in 1876. This experience gave him the idea for a standard time, with hourly variations according to different zones around the world.

The earth actual rotates 360 degrees in 4 minutes less than 24 hours. The reason for this effect is that the Earth is moving one degree each day in its orbit around the Sun. The Earth has to rotate 361 degrees between noon on one day to noon on the next day. The 360-degree rotation is called the sidereal day.

Although there are practical and economic advantages to a single time zone, the impetus for standardisation was more about a signal the Chinese Communist Party wanted to send when it came to power in 1949.

Other nations adopted systems that change time zones by smaller increments, like 15 or 30 minutes. For that reason, there are more time zones than the standard 24 in use today.

In 1883, American and Canadian railroads began using four different time zones across the continent, and in 1884, Fleming helped to convene the International Prime Meridian Conference, where standard time and time zones were made official.

China has one time zone. It is officially called China Standard Time (CST). It is 8 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+08:00).

While rotating around its axis, every 60 minutes, the Earth moves about 15 degrees. Thus, after 24 hours (one day), it completes a full rotation of 360 degrees. Based on this concept, the Earth was divided into 24 time zones, and each would be 15 degrees of longitude wide.