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Industrial Era |
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| Culture |
| Railways and steam powered factories heightened the need for standardized time. |
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| Time is Money |
| Industrialisation got underway in the 19th century due to the introduction of steam power. The introduction of steamtrains emphasized the need for time standardization. The first Dutch steam train ran between Amsterdam and Haarlem in 1839. Following a dispute between Jerusalem and Paris and the International Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884, the earth was divided into 24 time zones with the Greenwich meridian as starting point or 'zero meridian'. Local time was still in use in The Netherlands during the first half of the 19th century. The Meridian of Utrecht was installed at the Sonnenborgh observatory in Utrecht in 1853. Standardized 'Amsterdam Time' was officially not introduced before 1909. Public time was shown on master and (electric) slave clocks.
On the one hand, working hours were more efficiently organized by means of time clocks and, on the other hand, the struggle for more spare time by means of an 8-hour working day, a 40-hour working week and holidays.
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