TCS wrote:

I'll stick with my answer. Your logic makes sense, but the original reason
Fort Wayne stayed on Eastern time was to make it easier to deal with Detroit
automakers. That was some time ago. Things change. (You're young, I'm old.)

Thanks. I've reached the age where being called "young" is a
compliment. So thank you. I hope to be able to return the favor
sometime.

You're probably right that commerce with Detroit was a factor in setting
Fort Wayne's time zone, but the answer isn't as pat as you portray it.
For one, it doesn't explain why the other 90% of Indiana is also on
Eastern Time.

Time zones were first standardized in the mid 1880's - prior to that
each town set their clocks so that 12 noon occurred when the sun was
directly overhead. The main impetus was the railroads, who were having a
devil of a time making timetables with every single stop being in a
different time zone. Thus the idea of "standard" time zones: divide the
globe up into twenty-four 15 degree slices, each of which would be
offset by exactly one hour. Local geography created variations from the
strict longitudinal slicing, but almost all cities in the US adopted
"standard" time zones by 1890.

Detroit was a conspicuous exception, wavering between Central Time,
Eastern Time, and local "sun" time until about 1915. I'm not sure what
Fort Wayne or the rest of Indiana were doing during that time.

Time zone boundaries tended to push west as communities realized that
you could add an hour of daylight in the evening by simply adopting the
time zone to the east. By geometry, if you sliced up the country into
15 degree slices, the border between Central and Eastern time would be
somewhere near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Of course, the desire to
be on the same time zone as your trading partners to the east was a
factor as well.

These two factors caused all of Ohio plus almost all of Michigan and
Indiana to wind up in the "wrong" time zone. In the summer, it's stays
light here until after 10pm, and this morning it was still dark at 8am.
Weird, but I'm used to it.

Anyway, if Indiana chose their time zone to aid commerce, they've really
screwed the pooch by refusing to adopt Daylight Savings time. I can't
tell you how many scheduled conference calls to Indiana have been messed
up by people not being able to calculate the time offset.

And to make matters even more complicated, the four Indiana counties
that are in Central time *do* switch to Central daylight time in the
summer.

--
//-Walt
//
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