Which Canadian engineer proposed worldwide standard time zones in 1879?

The Canadian engineer who proposed worldwide standard time zones in 1879 was Sandford Fleming. His proposal helped shape the global system of standardized timekeeping used today.

Fleming was a Scottish-born Canadian engineer, surveyor and railway builder. After missing a train because a printed schedule confused a.m. and p.m., he became interested in making time notation more reliable. In 1876 he described a worldwide 24-hour system, and in papers presented to the Canadian Institute in Toronto on 8 February 1879, he developed his ideas about standard time and a prime meridian.

Fleming imagined 24 zones, each roughly 15 degrees of longitude wide, with a universal reference system for coordinating clocks. The 1884 International Meridian Conference adopted Greenwich as the prime meridian and endorsed a universal day, but it did not formally impose Fleming’s time-zone scheme, treating local standard time as a national matter. Thus, Fleming is best remembered as a major advocate and originator of the worldwide concept, not as the sole official creator of every modern zone boundary.