Why weren't time zones created until the late 1800's

Hello! Time zones weren’t created until the late 1800’s for a few reasons. At first, people used pendulum clocks, which were not an accurate way of finding scientific time and as new technologies developed, things got more awkward, so in the 1880’s, things started to change. There started to be hourly time zones based off of different places in the world. This is how it still works today, although China’s whole country is out in one time zone, even though the country exceeds 15 degrees in longitude.

Until long-distance communication developed, there really was no need to coordinate your local time with that of the next town, let alone with another continent.