Madras Time was a time zone set up in 1802 by John Goldingham, the first official astronomer of the British East India Company in India. It was set to 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+05:30). After India's independence, it was adopted as the Indian Standard Time and the location of the observatory was moved closer to the 82.5°E longitude in Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.
After Bombay time and Calcutta time were set up as the two official time zones of British India in 1884, railway companies in India began to use Madras time as an intermediate time zone between the two zones. This led to Madras time also being known as "Railway time of India".
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