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Imagine getting on a train at twelve noon and heading out on a four-hour trip to another town.
設想一下：您正乘坐一輛中午12點整出發的火車前往另外一個城市，路途耗費4個小時。
You'd expect to arrive at four o'clock in the afternoon, right? But before the last few decades of the 19th century, there was no guarantee that this would happen, and it usually had little to do with slow trains or drunken conductors.
你肯定期望在下午四點能夠準時到達，對吧？ 但是，在19世紀末之前，保障準確的抵達時間是基本不可能的，并且這與晚點或醉酒的列車長幾乎毫無關系。
Until the end of the 19th century virtually every town across the world kept time according to its own methods, creating problems for industries such as railroads that relied on precise timing to deliver goods.
實際上，直到19世紀末為止， 幾乎世界上每個城市都有自己記錄時間的方式，這就給需要精確定時發送貨物的行業，如鐵路運輸業等帶來無盡的麻煩。
To bring order to this chaos, a conference was held in Washington, D.C. in 1884. Delegates from around the world designated Greenwich, England as the starting point from which to create international time zones.
為了讓混亂的時間變得有序，各國代表于1884年在華盛頓特區召開了一次會議。代表們指定英國格林威治作為創建國際時區的起點。
But why was this small, London suburb chosen to create what became known as Greenwich Standard Time?
為什么這個倫敦郊區小鎮會被選定并創建格林威治標準時間呢？
Over 100 years before the Washington conference, King George II of England designated Greenwich as zero degrees longitude in order to help stabilize the shipping trade. If you look at a globe of the earth you'll see that the vertical line marked ‘zero' that runs from the North to the South Pole- zero degrees longitude–runs directly through Greenwich.
在華盛頓會議100多年以前，英國國王喬治二世為了穩定航運業，曾將格林威治標為0度經線所在地。如果你看一下地球儀，你可以看到聯通南北極的零度經線正好穿過格林威治。
By the time of the Washington conference many shippers already used the longitude system to keep time when traveling by sea. It was only natural for most countries to adopt this system as the basis for creating standard time for the entire planet.
在華盛頓會議召開之時，需要船公司在海運過程中已經使用經度系統來掌控時間。大多數國家自然就容易接受使用這一系統作為確認全球標準時間的基礎。
Based on longitude increments of fifteen degrees, time becomes one hour earlier each longitude west of Greenwich, and one hour later each longitude east of Greenwich. In other words, when it's twelve noon at zero degrees longitude, it's one o'clock at fifteen longitude east.
以每增加經度15度為基準，格林威治每往西一個時區時間便減少一個小時，而每往東一個時區則增加一個小時。換句話說，當零度經線處是中午十二點時，東經15度處便是下午1點。
