The Clock That Almost Swallowed America

In 1962, the US government came closer than you might think to scrapping four time zones entirely and putting the whole country on one clock.

The problem was real. From 1945 to 1966, federal law set no uniform daylight saving rules — so states and cities made up their own. Bus drivers on West Virginia Route 2 had to reset their watches seven times over just 35 miles. 1

In August 1962, the Transportation Association of America convened the Uniform Time Conference in Washington — 54 organizations (24 government agencies and 30 industry groups) united under one banner: end the chaos. They were told that "the United States keeps the most confusing time of any country in the world." 2

Then, in April 1963, Wyoming Senator Gale McGee took one step further during Senate Commerce Committee hearings on S.1033 — floating the idea of a single continental time zone for the entire United States. He was, by the record, the only person who ever did. 3

By June 1964, when the House held its own hearings, California Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin asked the Committee for Time Uniformity's executive director: "There is no serious consideration, is there, of a unified single time zone for the entire United States?" The answer confirmed it — no one else had followed McGee's suggestion. 2

On April 13, 1966, President Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act (P.L. 89-387) — standardizing daylight saving dates within the existing four-zone system. The mild reform won. 4 5

We almost lived on a single clock. Instead, we kept four — and the arguments never really stopped.

The Clock That Almost Swallowed America

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