With 24 world time zones in operation it can be tricky knowing the correct time for the Country you are travelling to. So here we provide an online clock that features the current World time for the World's different time zones.
World Time Zones ...
When you're travelling overseas, or just that you want to make a call to someone overseas, it can be difficult to work out what the time will be. Not with our online current World time clock.
We also, for some useful general knowledge, tell you a bit about how the world time zones began.
Current World Time ...
Select the Country you're travelling to in the drop down box below and the current World time for that time zone will be shown.
Over 120 years ago, all the World's cities set their own clocks to their own local time. Each local time was when the sun was at its highest in the sky, at around noon, for each different city.
So cities stood near to each other managed to set their clocks differently. i.e. if in New York it was 6:00PM, it would have been 6:12PM in Boston, that's because Boston is around 3 degrees east of New York City.
Before the invention of modern transportation and communication systems, this small time difference did not matter. But, once the popular railroads were built this timing proved to be both awkward and inefficient.
So, a Canadian railway planner Sir Sandford Fleming, who was also an engineer, thought about the introduction of time zones in the late 1870s.
And so in 1883 the first time zones were introduced.
In 1884, at an International conference in Washington, D.C. the whole World agreed to World time zones and so they were set - most of which are in use still today. The World time zone are split into 24 time zones, each one a long strip from North Pole to South Pole, about 15 degrees of longitude wide and about one hour difference in time.
As there are 24 hours in a day, the 24 time zones meant that each Country and city was using a time setting very close to their local time. And as each time zone differed by a whole number it was very easy to use.
