I'm behind the times

Prompted by the end of BST I searched GMT on Google, only to find that it has been called UTC since 1972. So then I looked up UTC and found that it stands for Coordinated Universal Time, so why not CUT? I'm clearly behind the times.

The French according to this article.

Thor

I think that UTC and GMT are not the same thing. Wikipedia explains it.

**LINK**

UTC is CUT in English, but people rarely bother to change the international acronym. Although UTC is the same as GMT for practical purposes ITC is derived by a completely different method. GMT was based on solar observations taken at the Greenwich observatory ( by international agreement Longitude 0° ) Best available at the the time but because Solar time wobbles it was necessary to average it to get a Mean Time.

When it was realised that solar time is also slowing down, the world switched in 1960 to a more accurate time standard based on International Atomic Time, or Temps Atomique International. TAI has been tweaked several times over the decades and is currently the weighted average of 400 Atomic Clocks around the world. Longitude 0° is still the same.

Nothing to do with the Common Market. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures happens to be based in France but it belongs to the 59 member-states.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 31/10/2021 18:29:15

So according to wikipedia '' the term GMT should not be used for anything requiring precision''.

So the next time I trim half a foot too much from the Privet hedge I'll call it 6 inches and all will be fine?

Many folk thought that with europe 1 hour ahead of us that it would be a good idea to drop GMT(or UTC) and stay on summer time all year and be the same as Europe- NOT realising that Europe also has summer time and move their clocks back and forth, on the same day we do. Ah well, Noel.

I have always thought that this tells us a lot about the French :

[quote]
The French did not adopt the Greenwich meridian as the beginning of the universal day until 1911. Even then it refused to use the name "Greenwich", instead using the term "Paris mean time, retarded by 9 minutes and 21 seconds". France finally replaced this phrase with "Coordinated Universal Time" (UTC) in 1978.^[13] [/quote]

MichaelG.

.

Ref. __ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 31/10/2021 18:03:37

They never really forgave us for Trafalgar and Waterloo

The EU were apparently doing away with the Summer/Winter time changes and with any luck the U.K. would have followed.

 It got voted through then seems to have got bogged down the mass of countries involved.

The EU had a chance to do something useful then appear to have fallen at the hurdles.

link about it here:-

Lost cause?

Edited By V8Eng on 31/10/2021 20:55:57

I'm all for using Zulu time.

It's a North-South thing. Winter nights get longer in proportion to reducing daylight the closer you get to the pole. As a result switching to and from summer-time makes good sense in Scotland and Sweden, but is less obviously worth doing in London, and it's value diminishes as one heads towards the equator. No-one cares about daylight saving in Malta!

The North-south divide evident in most countries makes the daylight saving a political issue throughout Europe. In the UK, is it in the interest of national unity for the south of England who don't care much to annoy the North by scrapping daylight savings? Please don't discuss!

I think the way folk confuse technology and politics quite odd. GMT was a method of defining international time based on astronomical observations and it was to humanities advantage to know what the time was around the globe. Like Whitworth, GMT was an important stepping stone, not proof Britain is top-nation.

Most counties didn't adopt GMT as their local time, instead offsetting GMT to make their 12am close to local noon. This idea developed into time zones. French politicians were upset when the Greenwich Meridian was adopted because they felt felt it damaged French prestige. Silly them: Greenwich was adopted for a solid practical reason, nothing to do with misplaced patriotic pride. At the time most of the world's hydrography had been done by the British Navy so almost all Maritime Charts expressed Longitude relative to London. Solid achievement, not flag waving.

GMT doesn't exist in the sense that anyone measures and distributes it. It's a folk memory, which lives on because it happens to be much the same as British Standard Time and because everyone hates change. No-one at the Greenwich Observatory adjusts chronometers relative to star transits and sends GMT based time signals around the world.

If GMT were still being measured, it would differ slightly from UTC because astronomical movements are a little erratic. For domestic purposes the difference is much too small to matter, but it does when precision is important. Precise time is provided by Atomic Clocks, which can be located anywhere.

The international time system is remarkably complicated, but it covers the needs of everyone from man in shed to nano-technology.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 01/11/2021 10:29:38