Cleveland Abbe
In order to compile his information, Abbe required a time-keeping system that was consistent among the stations. To accomplish this he divided the United States into four standard time zones. He published, in 1879, a paper titled "Report on Standard Time". In 1883, he convinced North American railroad companies to adopt his time-zone system. In 1884, Britain, which had already adopted its own standard time system for England, Scotland, and Wales, helped gather international consent for global time. In time, the American government, influenced in part by his 1879 paper, adopted the time-zone system.
International Meridian Conference
In the United States, the problems were much more severe, with one table showing over 100 local times varying by more than 3 hours. In 1870, Charles F. Dowd published a pamphlet titled "A System of national time and its application" advocating three time zones across the country based on the Washington meridian, modifying this to four zones based on the Greenwich meridian in 1872.