kaleidoscope

Once, I was working on a few geospatial APIs handling many time zones. While writing tests, I realized I did not know much about timezones. A lame excuse might be, my subpar schooling as a village kid. Nevertheless, I decided to turn the pages on timezones, what I found was more politics than science. Photo by  Arpit Rastogi  on  Unsplash Before diving into anomalies, let’s talk about history then we will go to science followed by politics. History The world without time zones By 300 BCE, the western world agreed that the earth is round. Each developed civilization devised its unique distinct system to measure distances, times & absolute locations, but relative to prime locations within their civilizations. It all worked in ancient times because long-distance travel was not prevalent among common people. Only merchants or armies traveled long distances. And they already developed systems that worked on their predetermined routes, irrespective of the time differences b...

The line opposite Prime-Meridian at 180° EAST/WEST longitude is called the Antimeridian. Something based upon it, but highly deviated from it, is called  International Date Line (IDL) Photo by  Chris Lawton  on  Unsplash I would recommend reading my  previous post , to understand the timezones, In the previous post I discussed, how the confusion of sudden date change was placed at IDL by using 180° east/west longitudes instead of 360°. Let's see what that confusion is, and how world politics changed this line from what should be a straight line, to what it is now in below image. Google Maps Time travel After the international Meridian conference in  1884 , the world agreed that the 15° change in longitude should decrease time by one hour when moving west and increase when moving east. But what about the places right on 180° EAST/WEST  aka Antimeridian? Even if IDL was a straight line, there was deliberate time chaos created here. Crossing the IDL trave...