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Person

William F. Allen

A man with gray hair and a full beard, dressed in a formal black suit with a patterned tie, stands against a dark background.

American railway editor (1846–1915) who, as secretary of the General and Southern Railway Time Conventions, drafted the four-zone scheme adopted across North America on November 18, 1883. He spent years collating the impossible patchwork of timetables in the Travelers' Official Railway Guide before proposing the fix that the industry, and eventually the country, accepted.

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