After missing a train while traveling in Ireland in 1876 because a printed schedule listed p.m. instead of a.m. , he proposed a single 24-hour clock for the entire world , with the 24 hour divisions ( labelled A-Y , excluding J ) arbitrarily linked to the Greenwich meridian , which was designated G . At a meeting of the Canadian Institute in Toronto on February 8 , 1879 , he linked it to the anti-meridian of Greenwich ( now 180 ° ) . He suggested that standard time zones could be used locally , but they were subordinate to his single world time , which he called Cosmic Time . He continued to promote his system at major international conferences including the International Meridian Conference of 1884 . That conference accepted a different version of Universal Time but refused to accept his zones , stating that they were a local issue outside its purview . Nevertheless , by 1929 , all major countries in the world had accepted time zones
International Meridian Conference
International Meridian Conference
Sandford Fleming