Abstract
The article deals with the approach to time measurement after the birth of the railway. The railway operation required the need to synchronize time between interconnected cities, which until then had their own local time.
Essentially, this meant that time ceased to be accurate at solar noon (formally local apparent solar noon), but it was the same everywhere. Railway time was the precursor to time zones.
Concept of time zones is currently facing new challenges in context of growing differences between the social time (lived by society), the existing standard time and the annual variability of solar-day length.