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Timekeeping (Clocks, Horology, Methods, Standards)

A few years ago (and for a few years) I used to commute by train to work and home again. My evening train was due to leave at 6.05pm. Four times out of five, the train actually arrived at the station at 6.20pm. About once a week it arrived even later than 6.20pm.

So why couldn't the powers-that-be see the pattern here and reschedule the timetable to 6.20pm? Then I could have gone for a drink in a warm cafe or pub, rather than having to wait 20 minutes or more on a cold platform.

Once, just once, the train actually turned up at 6.05pm. We regular commuters smiled at each other in disbelief and joy. We got on the train. Then came an announcement - the train crew had not arrived yet, they were stuck in a traffic jam, and the train sat there at the platform for 15 minutes...
 
I've been grumbling today about bus time-tables. To get to west Cornwall, I have to get a bus from my suburb (one an hour) into Falmouth, and get the Penzance bus (one every two hours) from there.

But the Penzance bus timetable has been changed, so it now leaves 10 minutes earlier than before - at about the same time my suburban bus gets in!

This means it's 50-50 whether I make the connection - last week I did, today I didn't. :evil:

And travelling east is not much better. I can make a connection to Truro, but that bus gets in 5 minutes after the bus for St Austell (one an hour) has left!

I hate FIRST buses!


(I had hoped this thread would delve into the philosophy of time, but what the heck - timetables, especially bad ones, are obviously a rich subject for discussion!)
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7759281.stm

Based in the US capital, Washington DC, Dennis McCarthy's job is to keep an eye on the effects of small variations in the earth's rotation and add or subtract "leap seconds". The next one will be on 31 December this year - December 2008 will last one second longer than December 2007, when no leap seconds were added.
One of the atomic clocks at the Washington Observatory

The director of time works for the equally grandly named International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. It receives data on the earth's rotation from a series of observatories around the world that plot the earth's exact position relative to a grid constructed from extremely bright, distant astronomical objects known as quasars.

These are distant galaxies, some over 10 billion light years away, powered by super-massive black holes which devour entire star systems and shine with the light of a trillion suns.

Because they are so distant, their position in the sky is absolutely fixed relative to the earth and they form a very steady and precise reference system relative to which we can measure the earth's rate of spin, and thereby keep our clocks in sync with the Earth's rotation.

Time is one of my favourite subjects. (I did an essay on it in a History of Science course back in 1981/2 - as we say in our current calendar! :D )
 
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125 years of the Greenwich meridian as Longitude zero

At the centre of time
By Lucy Rodgers
BBC News

Without it international travel would be in turmoil and calling friends in faraway places at the right time impossible. Exactly 125 years after the Greenwich Meridian line was drawn, how and why did Britain become the centre of time?

At longitude 0° 0' 00", the arbitrary stroke on our maps that passes from pole to pole and bisects the UK, France, Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana divides the Earth into east and west, just as the Equator splits it into north and south.

This imaginary line now known as the Greenwich Prime Meridian not only allows us to navigate the globe but also keeps the world ticking to the same symbolic 24-hour clock.

But it has not always been so.

Until the 19th Century, many countries and even individual towns kept their own local time based on the sun's passage across the sky and there were no international rules governing when the day would start or finish.

However, with the rapid expansion of the railways and communications networks during the 1850s and 1860s, setting a standard global time soon became essential.

"The world was in a very big mix-up," explains Dr Avraham Ariel, author of Plotting the Globe. "People had lots of prime meridians. Earlier in Europe there were 20 prime meridians. The Russians had two or three, the Spanish had their own and so on."

And so, 125 years ago this week, 41 delegates from 25 nations gathered in Washington in the US for the 1884 International Meridian Conference to decide from where time and space should be measured.

By the end of the difficult summit, which, according to Dr Ariel, dragged on until "smoke came out", Greenwich had won the prize of longitude 0º by a vote of 22 to one, with only San Domingo against and France and Brazil abstaining.

The meeting also agreed Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) would be used as the standard for the world, with the day beginning at midnight at Greenwich and counted on a 24-hour clock.

One of the main reasons for British victory over key rivals Washington, Berlin and Paris, was that 72% of the world's shipping already depended on sea charts that used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, says Dr Rebekah Higgitt, curator of the history of science and technology at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

etc...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8266883.stm
 
I hope MPs will kick out the bill and render this a non-story:

Berlin Time - the great debate: What YOU think about MPs' proposals to put our clocks forward by one hour
Last week, Peter Hitchens posed a critical question: Are MPs right to want our clocks put forward by one hour? Here we reveal how you responded – and how Britain would be affected
Last updated at 10:52 AM on 21st November 2010

London would be in semi-darkness at 9am on the shortest day of the year if MPs vote in favour of a Bill which would force this country to abandon Greenwich Mean Time and align itself with Berlin and other European cities.

Millions of people in the South would have to go to work before sunrise on December 21. And cities in the North, North-West and Wales would have to wait another half-hour after 9am for daylight.

The sun would not appear in Newcastle until 9.29am and Carlisle 9.34am. Even a month ­earlier, on November 21, sunrise would be at 8.47am in Liverpool and 9.05am in Belfast.

The full implications of the measure, which comes before the House of Commons on December 3, are only now becoming clear. Critics say huge swathes of the country would become like the frozen reaches of Scandinavia, where daylight is at a premium.

The Mail on Sunday has received more than 7,000 messages of support since columnist Peter Hitchens attacked the idea in an article in last week’s paper entitled ‘Don’t let them force you to live your life on Berlin Time.’ Readers sent in 4,573 coupons backing the campaign, 2,247 emails and 865 texts.

Changing the clocks would mean the morning rush hour would take place in a semi-gloom, leading to more dangerous conditions on the roads at the start of the day.
Because of the way the Earth turns, the darkest mornings would not be confined to the North. The sun would also rise much later in southern and western areas.
Parts of Cornwall would be on a par with Yorkshire, with daylight arriving at 9.18am in Penzance and 9.19am in Sheffield on December 21.

Supporters of the Bill say it would cut crime, save energy, encourage sport and make life easier for older people. :?:
According to the Lighter Later lobby group, the move would also create up to 80,000 jobs in leisure and tourism and ­prevent 100 road deaths and hundreds of serious injuries a year.

But opponents say the case for change has not been made. They are concerned that, without a concerted effort by MPs to block the move, GMT could soon be abandoned.

The proposal is contained in a Private Members Bill brought forward by Conservative MP for Castle Point in Essex, Rebecca Harris. She wants Britain to move to Continental Time, which is an hour ahead of GMT in winter and two hours ahead in summer.

Central European Time, as it used to be called, was adopted by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in 1893 and foisted upon the rest of the Continent in 1914 and again after 1940, when many countries were under Nazi occupation.

The aim was to ensure the clocks suited the needs of German soldiers and industry.
But Berlin is 580 miles and 15 degrees of longitude east of Greenwich, which means the sun rises and sets an hour earlier than in England.

If the Bill becomes law, Britain’s clocks would go forward an hour throughout the year. Instead of ­setting them to GMT in winter and British Summer Time (GMT +1) from spring to autumn, we would set them to GMT +1 in winter and GMT +2 in summer.

For millions of people across the UK, the result would be longer, darker mornings. People in Wick in the Highlands would not see daylight until 10am, and those in Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides only at 10.11am on the shortest day of the year.

...

Peter Thorne commented: ‘I am old enough to remember the last trial of this in the Sixties. It did not work then and it is not to our benefit now.’ [Me too: in fact , I had my one and only motor accident one dark morning during this experiment.]

etc, etc....

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z15v1eoPfe
 
This is a non-story about a Tory MP's Private Member's bill and should really be in the, 'Let's Give Europe a Kicking Thread'. Where it will be heading v.shortly.

P_M
 
I didn't put this in the Euro thread because the Bill's proposer, Rebecca Harris, says:

"It has even been suggested, God forbid, that I am part of an EU plot to take us on to ‘Berlin Time’. Amusing, but far-fetched! This is about Britain, not Europe."

(Same link)
 
Then the Thread title should reflect the true nature of the Harris proposal.

Do you want to clarify?

Done. Thread Title altered for clarification purposes.

P_M
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Then the Thread title should reflect the true nature of the Harris proposal.

Do you want to clarify?

P_M
Geographically speaking, the proposed time zone is Berlin Time, Berlin being 15 degrees E of London. (15 deg of Longitude implies a one hour time difference.) So 'Berlin Time' is a shorthand description of what the bill proposes.

(Paris, by contrast, is on almost the same longitude as London, so in a sensible world France should be on GMT! ;) )
 
Here in the Netherlands, it is now 14:00 (2:00pm). In the UK, it's 13:00 (1 O'Clock). I don't really see the problem, re. London and the South. However, if I still lived up in the Orkneys, the sun would now be coming up around 08:20 and going down again, about 15:35 (just after three thirty five in the afternoon). So, it's a short day up there, whatever it says on the clock.

http://www.orcadian.co.uk/weather/sunsets.htm

GMT is only really useful, or relevant, if you have to set a ship's chronometer, half way across the Pacific.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
GMT is only really useful, or relevant, if you have to set a ship's chronometer, half way across the Pacific.
That's very dismissive!

GMT (and its modern continuation, Universal Time) is the worldwide basis of navigation for all forms of transport, ships, planes, and spacecraft, not to mention the growing army of motorists who rely on their satnavs.

GMT or UT is based on the Mean Time at the Greenwich meridian, which was selected as the prime meridian for timekeeping and navigation by an international conference in 1884.

So whatever daft bills our MPs may pass, GMT is deeply embedded in science and technology, and will not disappear any time soon.
 
Exactly, very useful for the calibration of international flights, shipping, electronic media and space satellites. Not especially useful as a guide for when to set your alarm clock.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Exactly, very useful for the calibration of international flights, shipping, electronic media and space satellites. Not especially useful as a guide for when to set your alarm clock.
Since 1924, we've used the Greenwich Time signal (the 'pips') for that, from BBC steam radio. ;) However;
First introduced in 1924, the viability of continued use of the time signal on radio is under discussion [citation needed], as the unavoidable time lags associated with digital broadcasting systems make its use less feasible as an aid to calibration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Pips
 
The campaign seems to be getting up steam:

Double summertime would 'make Britain richer, greener and happier'
Putting the clocks forward an hour for “double summertime” would boost the economy, help the environment and give people hundreds of hours of extra daylight every year, MPs will be told today.
By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent 12:01AM GMT 25 Nov 2010

Plans for a permanent shift forward for Britain’s clocks would allow most people to experience an extra 235 hours of daylight after work every year, according to a new report.

The study, Time to Change the Clocks, has been compiled by Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative MP and ministerial aide, as the Commons prepares to vote on a change in the timezone.

The Commons will next week consider a bill tabled by Rebecca Harris, another Conservative MP, which asks ministers to study the change and consider a temporary experiment with double summertime.

David Cameron signalled earlier this year that he was prepared to consider the change, and Government whips are expected to let the bill proceed if enough MPs show interest.

It is understood that the Prime Minister has told colleagues he is happy to leave the matter in the hands of Vince Cable, the Business Secretary.

Double summertime would mean lighter evenings, with sunset in midsummer put back to after 10pm in many parts of the country. But mornings would become darker, especially in Scotland, where the change has long been opposed.

Mr Ellwood’s report brings together research suggesting that lighter evenings would deliver annual benefits including:

100 fewer deaths from road accidents
saving £200 million a year for the NHS because of the reduced accident rate
boosting British tourism by £2.5 billion a year
reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2.2 per cent a year.

Britain has previously experimented with clock change. From 1968 until 1971, summertime applied throughout the year in an arrangement dubbed British Standard Time.

After complaints in Scotland and northern England, the MPs voted to end the experiment, although subsequent research showed the temporary change had delivered a net fall in deaths and injuries on the roads.

Mr Ellwood concluded that changes in lifestyles, working patterns and technology have all made Britain better-suited to the new timezone than in the 1970s.

“Lifestyles, technologies, industries, interests and priorities have changed fundamentally since the last experiment,” his report said. “The majority of objections have now died away or adopted a neutral stance.”
“Compared to life under the last clock change experiment, our daily routines are better structured to take advantage of lighter evenings. We have also become more technologically adept and will thus be able to manage the added darkness of the mornings."

The bill is being backed by Lighter Later, an umbrella campaign group backed by road safety groups, accident-prevention charities and environmental campaigners.

Daniel Vockins of Lighter Later described the bill as “a once in a generation opportunity to change time and is proof that you can cut carbon whilst improving people's lives”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... ppier.html

The fact is, there is only a given amount of daylight per day, and fiddling with the clocks won't change this. 'We have also become more technologically adept and will thus be able to manage the added darkness of the mornings' - what does that mean, exactly? It'll still be cold, dark and icy in the winter mornings, but for longer. In this part of Cornwall, midwinter sunrise won't be until about 0915 under this new proposal.

I also resent sidelining GMT, which is a proud reminder of Britain's industrial, scientific and nautical traditions.
 
Nobody cares about tired people. I can't stand summer time because I can actually feel the hour sleep I'm being robbed of. Come normal time, I feel better. I truly believe that we can't just call a donkey a horse and get on with it. There is something like an inner clock that shouldn't be ignored. If it was up to me I'd get rid of summer time completely. I HATE it!
 
Dingo667 said:
If it was up to me I'd get rid of summer time completely. I HATE it!
Well, 'Berlin Time' won't help you, as all Europe would presumably still change the clocks by one hour for the summer, just as they do now.
European Summer Time is the arrangement in Europe by which clocks are advanced by one hour in Spring to make the most of seasonal daylight. This is done in all of the countries of Europe except Iceland which observes Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) all year round. In the European Union this period extends from 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in March until 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in October each year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Summer_Time
But you could always emigrate to Iceland! ;)
 
So it is CET that is being proposed not 'Berlin Time'?

Thread could be a little less misleading if you changed it to "Evil Tory Scum Surrenders Britain To The Jerries".

Presumably the terror of people going to work at 9am in the dark is the same thing that people are actively campaigning for to happen in Scotland as side-effect of stopping putting the clocks back.

Don't understand this desire to match everything up across Europe. Same currency, same time, same this, same that. Why not just go the whole hog and unify the language and flags and remove the borders and just name it the United States of Europe?
 
McAvennie_ said:
Don't understand this desire to match everything up across Europe. Same currency, same time, same this, same that. Why not just go the whole hog and unify the language and flags and remove the borders and just name it the United States of Europe?
Well, that's a discussion for the Trash Europe thread!

But it gives me the opportunity to point out (not for the first time ;) ) that the other United States (of America) is quite happy to bumble along with nine different time zones (four of which cover the main area of the continental US).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_time_zones

So the USA is no precedent for the EU to unify the clocks, and as Rebecca Harris has said (as I pointed out earlier) this parliamentary bill is about Britain, not Europe.
 
Exactly, the US manages with multiple time zones. Presumably China does. Why should Britain need to unify with 'Berlin' specifically, let alone any other European city.
 
Warning: We switched to Berlin Time and it was a catastrophe
By Martin Delgado And Tom Wordon
Last updated at 3:41 AM on 28th November 2010

Britain has been warned that switching to Berlin Time could have a damaging effect on health, education, energy consumption and commerce.

As MPs prepare to vote on the proposal this week, warning bells were sounded in Portugal, which went through a disastrous four-year experiment with Berlin Time in the Nineties.

The change was foisted upon an unsuspecting public by the Lisbon government. Politicians there deployed identical arguments to those now being fed to Britons by the Bill’s supporters.


The official line in Portugal was that moving the clocks forward by one hour would create jobs, reduce road deaths and encourage participation in sport. But the opposite proved to be the case and the government had to heed public opinion and return to GMT.

The proposal to move Britain on to Berlin Time is contained in a Private Members’ Bill introduced by Conservative MP Rebecca Harris, with the Commons vote taking place on Friday.

If the measure goes through, clocks would be shifted forward by one hour throughout the year. Instead of setting them to GMT in winter and GMT+1 in summer, they would be set to GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer.
Clocks would still go forward in spring and back in autumn, but the sun would rise and set one hour later throughout the year.

Ms Harris and her supporters say the change would cut the number of children injured on the roads because it would be lighter for longer in the afternoons when they come out of school.

They also claim it would reduce crime, allow people more outdoor leisure time and create jobs by enabling tourist attractions to stay open for longer.

However, opponents point out that millions more people all over Britain would have to go to work and school in the dark.

London would be in semi-darkness at 9am on the shortest day of the year, December 21, and the sun would not appear in Carlisle on that day until 9.34am.

There is also concern that the longer summer evenings could lead to more outdoor drinking and anti-social behaviour. Sunset in Glasgow on the longest day of the year, June 21, would not take place until 11.06pm, while in Nottingham it would be at 10.34pm and in Dover it would be at 10.14pm.

The Lisbon government made the switch in 1992 to bring Portugal into line with many other European countries. But it soon became clear that Portugal’s position on the western edge of Europe meant it had more in common with Britain than with Germany or Poland.

The hugely unpopular and costly experiment was abandoned in 1996 after a government commission condemned it as a spectacular failure.


The Portuguese found that changing to Berlin Time – officially known as Continental Time – led to poorer exam results as children could not get to sleep because of the lighter evenings and were therefore tired at school the following day.

There was also an increase in stress levels, insomnia and consumption of sleeping pills. More road accidents occurred during the darker winter mornings and energy bills rose because households used more electricity.

Rui Agostinho, director of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory, who sat on the commission, said Britain would face similar problems if it adopted Berlin Time.
Mr Agostinho said: ‘Politicians think they can simply change the local time by law, regardless of what the sun is doing.
‘But the reality is all our lives are ruled by daylight and we strongly depend on the sun.
‘In 1992 the government here decided they wanted to have the same time as Brussels because of the European Union. They claimed business relations with Europe would improve. But the experience was very bad.
‘Our commission sat in 1995 and every government ministry involved was in favour of changing back to British time.

‘The consumption of medication for stress and insomnia increased dramatically. People were not feeling well. Schoolchildren suffered extreme effects – in the winter they were starting school while the stars were still in the sky.
‘They were not sleeping well enough and they were forced out of bed when it was dark.

‘The human body needs sunlight to help it wake up properly. People were driving while sleepy and kids were going to school when they were not ready to start learning.’

Mr Agostinho, who is also professor of physics at the University of Lisbon, added: ‘The number of road accidents increased and retail industry suffered because customers would not shop in the mornings as it was too dark and too cold.

‘The data shows you don’t save money. Electricity consumption increased in the mornings because it was still dark. Similar effects would be felt in Britain.’

Meanwhile, Portugal’s neighbour Spain is considering switching to GMT after 70 years on Berlin Time.
The National Commission for the Rationalisation of Timetables, the official body examining the matter, recommended the switch in a report to the government in January.


Commission chairman Ignacio Buqueras told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Spain would be a much healthier, happier and more competitive
country if we operated on GMT rather than Berlin Time.

‘You only have to look at a map of Europe to see that Britain, Spain and Portugal all fit into the same time zone. It makes no sense to lump us in with Berlin.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z16ZNON0BG

Portugal is as far west as Ireland, so Berlin Time makes even less sense there than for the UK.
 
McAvennie_ said:
Exactly, the US manages with multiple time zones. Presumably China does.
I seem to remember reading that China operates, throughout, on Beijing time -- which must lead to crazy situations if you're in Tibet or Xinjiang / Uygur in the far west. Presumably, though, people manage (and have worse stuff to worry about).
 
amyasleigh said:
McAvennie_ said:
Exactly, the US manages with multiple time zones. Presumably China does.
I seem to remember reading that China operates, throughout, on Beijing time
I hadn't realised that, but, checking a time zone map, it does show all China on GMT+8. (Russia, by contrast, has 11 time zones!)
 
Australia has between 3 and 5, depending on the time of year. There's often a lot of complaints about it being confusing, but on the whole it works OK.
 
People in the UK, struggling to get through their early morning journey to work in the snow and the ice, might want to consider how much worse it would be with an extra hour of darkness to contend with.

And what a nonsense it would be if UK went to Berlin Time, while Spain reverted to GMT! Keep the clocks matched to the sun!
 
Britain's not going to be going on to'Berlin Time'.

Really. :roll:

However, if you want to scare yourself further, here's a page from the '10:10' campaign, advocating the same. Complete with a paragraph on the 'British Standard Time', experiment, back in the late Sixties, early Seventies.

http://www.lighterlater.org/history.html

:lol:
 
rynner2 said:
People in the UK, struggling to get through their early morning journey to work in the snow and the ice, might want to consider how much worse it would be with an extra hour of darkness to contend with.

Presumably only minimally worse than it is presently when they are travelling home in snow and ice. ;)
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Britain's not going to be going on to'Berlin Time'.
Those who feel strongly about this (either way) should email their MP.

I just did! ;)

(To find your MP, see bottom of page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ for Find a Representative.)
 
I was still going to primary school, in Scotland, back in the 'British Standard Time', winters of 1969 -1971. It was still night time when I went to school in the mornings. I can think of more important issues to e-mail MPs about these days, than a Private Member's Bill about setting the clocks to Greenwich, or Greenwich + 1, instead of Greenwich +1, or Greenwich + 2.

Still, here's a classic piece of Daily Mail diatribe on the subject, to froth along to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1329444/Join-campaign-Greenwich-Mean-Time.html

:lol:
 
I'm puzzled. When did "Paris" or CET become "Berlin" time? Is this just a ridiculous attempt by the Mail to drum up anti-German sentiment?
 
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