← all shorts

Person

Ian R. Bartky

A man with gray hair and glasses, wearing a light blue shirt and dark blazer, stands against a neutral background.

American historian of timekeeping (1932–2017) and former physicist at the National Bureau of Standards. His books Selling the True Time (2000) and One Time Fits All (2007) reconstructed how American time zones were imposed by private railway interests, and pushed back against the popular story that standardisation was a triumph of scientific reason rather than commercial expedience.

Mentioned in 1 article