Before Thomas Edison, light and fire were thought to be the same, though we now know otherwise. This book takes a similar relationship, that of time and place, and shows how they, too, were once considered inseparable. Time-keeping was once a local affair, when small towns set their own pace according to the rising and setting of the sun. Later, the expanding railroads necessitated the creation of Standard Time zones, and communities became linked by a universal time. Here Howard Mansfield explores how our sudden interconnectedness, both physically, via the railroad, and through inventions like the telegraph, changed our concept of time and place forever.