What Is Standard Time?

Standard time is the time within each individual time zone. In other words, it is the system according to which the time stays the same within the same time zone and has one hour offset at the border of neighboring zones. Nevertheless, there are areas that have offset of 30 minutes. As a rule that is the local time in a country or region. It is also known as administrative or civil time.

The term "standard time" is also widely used. Introduction of the railways made it desirable to create a standard time in the XIX century. Local time changes with the change of geographic longitude so each station lived according to its own local time. People had to change clocks when moving in trains from east to west. Standard time was introduced to solver this problem.

The international community has decided to divide the Earth into 24 time zones. Time zones are calculated from west to east. They are numbered 0 through 23. Each time zone is 15 degrees wide (this is an approximate figure with a small margin of error). The initial time zone is the prime meridian in Greenwich (0°longitude). The 180th meridian is used as the basis for the International Date Line.

The zero zone was called Western European, the first - Central European, the second - Eastern European.

In 2011 people in Russia stopped using the standard time. The standard time was replaced with the local time. Decree time was introduced to the Soviet Union time system in 1930 in order to better use daylight hours. All clocks in the Soviet Union were permanently shifted one hour ahead. People began to use the time of the second time zone.

In 2014 Russia switched to year-round winter time. In this case local Moscow time is one hour ahead of the second time zone.