1883: U.S. and Canadian railways adopt five standardized time zones to replace the multiplicity of local times in communities across the continent. Everyone would soon be operating on "railroad time."

Noon on a well-made, properly paced sundial is whenever the sun is highest right there. The advent of mechanical timekeeping in the Middle Ages didn't change that. Noon in your town was whenever the sun was highest right there. If that meant that noon in a town a hundred miles away might be a few minutes ahead or behind your local noon, big deal. You couldn't get there fast enough for it to matter.

The railroad changed that, starting in the early 19th century. The horse had been the fastest way to move people and goods from one place to another since the species was domesticated, as early as 4000 B.C. The six-millennium reign ended quickly as networks of rails spread across North America and Europe at mid-century.

But timekeeping was still medieval. Local jewelers synchronized their customers' watches to local solar noon. In a small town with one jeweler, everyone might use the same time settings. In a large city, the many jewelers' various observations might diverge by several minutes. Some places achieved citywide synchronization by dropping a time ball on a highly visible tower at noon every day. (It worked better than ringing a bell. You might hear a great bell two or three miles away, but that would be 10 or 15 seconds after it was struck.)

Thousands of municipalities each worked to their local times. The Chicago Tribune, for instance, showed 27 local times in Michigan, 38 in Wisconsin, 27 in Illinois and 23 in Indiana.

Railroad timetables used about a hundred different standards. A single railroad that traveled east to west would use multiple noons: The Union Pacific, for example, had six different settings in what are today the Central and Mountain zones. The Union Station that served multiple railroads in a big city might have five or six different clocks, one for each railroad in the station, each running on is own time.

As new technology let railroad trains go even faster, the need for a better system was increasingly evident. The multiplicity of local time settings also created complexity and confusion for operators and users of the telegraph (whose lines usually followed the rails) and the newfangled telephone.

England, Scotland and Wales standardized to Greenwich Mean Time on Dec. 6, 1848, after two decades of urging by Sir John Herschel. In the United States, Charles F.Dowd, principal of Temple Grove Ladies' Seminary at Saratoga Springs, New York, pushed the case in 1869 for four time zones, each the width of 15 degrees of longitude. Professor Benjamin Pierce of Harvard picked up the cudgels in the 1870s.

The cause was also championed by William F. Allen, secretary of the General Time Convention, the group the railways had formed to coordinate their schedules. (That group evolved into Association of American Railroads.)

The railroads finally agreed to General Time Convention on Oct. 11, 1883. They adopted five time zones: Intercolonial Time (now known as Atlantic Time in eastern Canada) and the Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones. The U.S. zones were based on solar noon at 75, 90, 105 and 120 degrees west of Greenwich.

When the new system took effect at noon on Nov. 18, conductors all over the United States and Canada resynchronized their watches from their individual railroads' times to the new standard times. Some folks objected, thinking they were being robbed of minutes, just as people felt robbed of days when the calendar shifted from Julian to Gregorian in previous centuries.

But businesses followed the lead of the railroads, and people showed up for work when employers said they needed to, and customers visited stores when shopkeepers said they were open. And people arrived at the railroad station to catch trains that ran on the same time settings as the watches in their pockets and the clocks on the sidewalks.

So convenient was the system of time zones that it thrived entirely on the say-so of the railroads for 35 years. Congress did not enact Standard Time until March 19, 1918, when it also initiated Daylight Saving Time as an efficiency measure during World War I.

Source: FREMO (Friendship Association of European Model Railroaders)

Don't talk to strangers — scan them instead. That's the idea behind the so-called ShotCodes on clothing by W-41, a Netherlands-based online apparel company. If you spot one of these unique logos in the wild (bar, club, methadone clinic, DMV), you surreptitiously snap a photo of it with your phonecam and a tiny app directs you to the wearer's LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace profile. You can then decide whether a "Hello" is in order. To get in on the action, simply visit W-41.com, download a free mobile app, select a ShotCode, and purchase gear from the online store ($50 to $57 a pop). Owners can connect their symbol to any Web site. Beats having to dust off lines like "If you were a phaser, you'd be set on 'stunning.'"*

*Other pickup line options: "Later, when my Facebook page asks me what I'm doing, can I write 'You'?" "You're as curvy as a toroid." "If I said you had top-specced hardware, would you interface with me?"

Home test kits used to be for things like finding out if you're pregnant or checking the hot tub's chlorine level. Now over-the-counter chemical tests can tell you if your spouse is cheating or if your new home ever doubled as a meth lab. Yes, science now makes house calls.

The Kit (left) Tests for STDs Some ailments are too embarrassing for the family doc. This kit, part of the CDC's Infertility Prevention Project, lets you swab your privates in private. Send in the sample and a lab runs free tests for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis.

CheckMate Tests for Infidelity Riskay may rap about smelling her man's member to sniff out a cheater. You may prefer to use CheckMate. Rub the blotting paper in the suspect's underpants, then dip it in the included chemicals — if the pad turns purple, they've got some explaining to do.

Lead Test Kit Tests for Lead You never know what shortcuts were taken to make your tyke's Hannah Montana doll. Unless, of course, you swab the toy with indicator solution. If the solution on the swab or on the toy turns yellow, brown, or black, you've got lead.

MethChek 50 Tests for Meth Residue Foreclosures are a great chance to score a house on the cheap. But how do you know that three-bedroom ranch wasn't once a suburban meth lab? By swabbing the walls with this immunoassay kit, of course!

This photo contest, Heat, is inspired by San Francisco's unexpected November heat wave. And since fall hasn't been shining so brightly on other cities, we figure the rest of the country could use some heating up as well.

As a special treat, Canon is sponsoring this photo contest. Enter to win a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best Heat photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us sweaty glasses of ice water, oasis mirages in the middle of a baking desert, and flaming foundries filled with molten metal. Make us sweat on the doorstep of winter as we face the months of rain and snow ahead.

The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.

We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!

Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Fall, Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation, and Black and White.

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your heat photo.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

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Conveying the excitement people feel about music in a still image can be like describing sight to the blind. The 10 reader-elected finalists of our music photo contest may not make you hear music, but they expertly capture a musical moment. Blair takes home the gold with his photo "The Horn Player" at left. Click through the gallery to see the contestants who were nipping at his heels.

Since we had so many great photos that we thought should've received more votes, and because we love to anger readers with our selections, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice Music Photo Gallery.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest is Heat. It's cold outside this winter and we need to warm our feet by your photographic fire. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

The Horn Player
Submitted by Blair

Photographer's comment:

"Covent Garden, London.�

DreadHead
Submitted by Amaiia

Photographer's comment:

"Guitarist of the famous French ska band Fizcus live @ Seasplash Festival, Croatia."

Jeff Locke
Submitted by Christie Hemm

Photographer's comment:

�He's good.�

Fizcus
Submitted by Podi

Photographer's comment:

"French ska band Fizcus on concert

"13/1 sec, f/3.5, flash on, second curtain"

The Underbelly
Submitted by Elizabeth Kovach

Photographer's comment:

"Messing around with the organ."

On the Outside
Submitted by Ross Gilmore

Photographer's comment:

"Old busker plays his banjo, against a 14-foot-high security fence, at an outdoor rock concert."

Tickling Ivory
Submitted by Bob

Photographer's comment:

"Hands playing piano."

My Stepfather's Piano
Submitted by Tin Man

Photographer's comment:

"I'm no photographer, I'm a musician, and this is my art. My stepfather left me this piano when he died in 1998, and I use it to compose. Its sound is not great by traditional standards, but to me it is wonderful.�

Tandoori Tunes
Submitted by Joakim Lloyd Raboff

Photographer's comment:

�A musician sat down and played a tune while I tried to listen to a podcast on the beach in Goa, India."

Yaya
Submitted by amaiia

Photographer's comment:

"Jadranka Bastajic Yaya, lead singer of Croatian band Jinx.

"Canon EOS 350d, f/4.0, 1/200, 50mm"

Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our music photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest is Heat. It's cold outside this winter, and we need to warm our feet by your photographic fire. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

Arcade Fire Encore
Submitted by Ryan Muir

Photographer's comment:

"The Arcade Fire set up their in-crowd encore right in front of my face. Spotlights shining on them from a distance — thousands of people scattered around thinking the show was over. Took me by surprise as much as anybody else.... This was pretty much the most memorable concert-going experience of my life. So glad to have had my camera.â€�

Gospel Groove
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"A group of young South Africans perform a special gospel set for me and a group of visitors to their school in the Cape Flats."

1898 Piano
Submitted by Dan Snyder

Photographer's comment:

"In my backyard."

Stephen Malkmus of Pavement — Houston, 1999
Submitted by Scot Ferguson

Photographer's comment:

"Stephen Malkmus of Pavement — Houston, 1999, their last tour."

Adding to the Noise
Submitted by throughHislens

Photographer's comment:

"Music means a lot to me, so that's why it was saddening to see this on the ground. But, you can see this transition in music, in that the different mediums that make it up are slowly transitioning into something that was not available at the start. Bittersweet.�

Barefoot Rock
Submitted by Casey Moore

Photographer's comment:

"Land of Talk — SXSW 2008."

Bunny Surf
Submitted by M. Young

Photographer's comment:

"Taken at the Vans Warped Tour, Mansfield, Massachusetts, August 2008."

Achtung Accordion!
Submitted by Fritz Speilemann

Photographer's comment:

"Although far from my favorite instrument, this young dude played his instrument like a god!�

Drum
Submitted by Casey Cramer

Photographer's comment:

"Drum in empty prayer room in Hunder Gompa, Nubra Valley, Ladakh, India"

One-Man Band
Submitted by Elias

Photographer's comment:

"Took this photo in Bath, England. This man was playing on the sidewalk, with both a violin and a guitar simultaneously. He had hooked up the guitar to a foot pedal that played certain notes as he turned the crank."

1749: Nicolas Appert is born. He will invent the modern food-canning process while trying to help Napoleon conquer Europe.

By 1795, France was in an expansionist mood and quarreling with its neighbors. As the army and navy found themselves increasingly embroiled in foreign entanglements, the realization that an army travels on its stomach began forcefully hitting home. Looking for a way to efficiently provision its troops in the field, the revolutionary government offered a prize of 12,000 francs to whoever could devise a way of doing just that.

Nicolas Appert, an experienced chef living on the outskirts of Paris, took up the challenge. More than a decade later, he had the solution.

Through experimentation, Appert eventually concluded that the best method of preservation was to heat the food to the boiling point of water, then seal it in airtight glass jars.

Appert's principles were tested successfully by the French navy, which found that everything from meat to vegetables to milk could be preserved at sea using his method.

Napoleon was running things by now and immediately recognized the benefit to his far-flung armies. He was so grateful to have the problem of victualing solved that in 1810 he had the revolutionary government's Directory award Appert the 12,000 francs.

Appert took the money and opened the world's first cannery. The cannery was destroyed in 1814 as Napoleon's world came crashing down.

A few years later, Englishman Peter Durand refined the process even more by switching from glass to the tin containers we associate with modern canning.

Fortunately for Appert, Napoleon did not retain his services as chef on his ill-fated invasion of Russia, and so lived on until 1841, dying at 91.

Source: Various