To find the current World time, wherever you are headed on your travels, use this guide.
Current World Time...
Whether you're travelling across one, two or three time zones use this guide, and online current World time clock, to know what time of day it is anywhere in the World.
Local, Current World Time ...
Just select the Country for which you'd like to know the current World time - the local time will then be displayed.
Many travellers wonder how the time zones as we know them today came about. Well here we explain all...
... nearly one hundred and thirty years ago
each city in the World set their own time. This was based on when the sun was at its highest in the sky, viewed from each city. The clocks would then be set as noon.
So cities that neighboured one another set their clocks differently so the whole system would work. So neighbours Boston and New York would set the times at 6:00PM in New York City and 6:12PM in Boston (as Boston is about 3 degrees east of New York.)
This way of telling the time worked well, until that was, modern transport links and communication methods increased in popularity and the system then proved to be both awkward and inefficient, especially for the railroads.
So Sir Sandford Fleming, a famous Canadian railway planner and engineer, set to work on a time zones system in the 1870s, along with the railroad companies, so the rail networks could be standardised and efficient. In 1883 they were used for the first time, and to great success.
In 1884, this idea became global, following an International conference in Washington, D.C.
The World was divided into 24 time zones, each one a long strip from North to the South Pole, about 15 degrees of longitude wide and about one hour difference in time.
All that resides in one time zone would set their clock the same way, to the local time in the centre of the time zone.
And as there are 24 hours in a day, dividing the earth into 24 time zones meant that everybody was using a time setting very close to their local time. Because each time zone differed by a whole number, it was easy to convert from the time in one zone to the time in another, and therefore easier to make travel plans.
