[tz] The origin of time zone regions

[Arthur David Olson]

A middling-length story with a small point.

In the seventies and eighties, I helped develop two-dimensional PAGE* image
analysis software. Black and white images had a thousand or so spots; the
positions of the spots and their size provided information on the
characteristics and abundances of proteins in samples. Step one was to get
the positions and sizes of spots in a single image. Step two was to compare
two images, pairing up the spots. Some spots would only appear in one image
and have no pairs; in other cases, two (or more) spots would appear in one
image where only one appeared in the other; one spot would be paired with
multiple spots.

The final step was to consider groups of images. For this purpose, there
were groups of spots where (to quote an article on the matter) “each spot
in a group is paired with some other spot in the group and no spot in any
group is paired with any spot in any other group.”

In the mid-eighties, work started on the time zone database. And time zone
regions ended up being defined as being places where all the clocks agreed.

The small point: the nature of time zone regions has less to do with
chronometry or geopolitics than it does with gel analysis.

     @dashdashado

_

*
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/two-dimensional-gel-electrophoresis
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