International Meridian Conference
On 11 October 1883, a convention of railroad executives met in Chicago and agreed to the implementation of five time zones in North America, using as a basis Greenwich Mean Time. Before the invitations to the Washington conference were sent out on December 1, the joint efforts of Abbe, Fleming and William Frederick Allen, Secretary of the US railways' "General Time Convention" and Managing Editor of the "Travellers' Official Guide to the Railways", had brought the US railway companies to an agreement which led to standard railway time being introduced at noon on 18 November 1883 across the nation. Although this was not legally established until 1918, there was thus a strong sense of "fait accompli" that preceded the Washington conference, although setting local times was not part of the remit of the conference.
International Date Line
The Russian Empire settled northwest North America from Siberia, from the west with its own Julian calendar (it did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918). The United States purchased Russian America while based in the contiguous United States, from the east with its own Gregorian calendar (adopted in 1752 while several British colonies). The transfer ceremony occurred on the day that the commissioners appointed by the governments of Russia and the United States for that purpose arrived via the at New Archangel (Sitka), the capital of Russian America. The United States recorded this date as Friday, (Gregorian), now known as Alaska Day, whereas the Russian governor, who had remained in New Archangel, would have recorded it as Saturday, (Julian). Senator Charles Sumner stated during his three-hour ratification speech (an encyclopedic discussion of Russian America) on Tuesday, , that this day of the week and calendar discord should be changed. Because the transfer of ownership officially occurred at Sitka mean solar time (time zones were not yet in use), that was the date and time that Alaska changed from an Asian and Julian date to an American and Gregorian date. If the transfer had occurred at the preceding midnight then Friday, (Julian) would have been followed by Friday, (Gregorian), a duplicate day with a 12-day difference appropriate both for changing from an Asian date to an American date (equivalent to moving the IDL from the east to the west of Alaska) and for changing from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar during the 19th century.