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.
Daylight saving time in the Americas
Since 2007, in areas of Canada and United States in which it is used, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November. In Mexico, Congress has consistently been refusing to adopt this schedule on a nationwide basis for nearly a decade. Therefore, only certain border cities in Mexican states that observe DST follow the same pattern as Canada and the United States. The rest of Mexico remains out of phase beginning DST on the first Sunday of April and ending on the last Sunday of October, the same schedule followed by Canada and the United States prior to 2007.