Until 1883 every American town kept its own noon, the moment the sun stood highest over that particular street, so a train crossing the country passed through dozens of slightly different times without anyone touching a clock. On Sunday, 18 November 1883, the railroads fixed that by themselves. A telegraph signal went out when it was noon on the 90th meridian, and station clocks were reset to the new zones. In New York, which sits a little east of its zone’s line, noon came by the sun, and then about four minutes later it came again by the railroad. People called it the day of two noons. Nobody had passed a law. Congress made the zones official only in 1918, so for thirty-five years the country told time by a timetable a few companies had agreed on to keep their trains from running into each other, and hardly anyone noticed there was no law behind it.