Re: GMT -> UTC in Australia
On Tue 2005-02-22T18:27:36 -0800, Steve Allen hath writ: > Australia has decided to redefine its legal time scale. The bill was introduced today. Details of Bill 11 are found here. http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/isys/isyswebext.exe?op=get&uri=/isysquery/irl66ce/1/doc/#hit1 The text of the bill is here http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/nswbills.nsf/0/de842061017f029eca256fb000169179/$FILE/b04-133-16-p01.pdf It defines UTC as being determined by the BIPM. Nowhere is the ITU-R mentioned. The BIPM says UTC is based on TAI, which is acknowledged to be their own responsibiliy, and leaps as determined by the IERS. So it remains unclear who ultimately controls the fate of civil time in New South Wales. But the explicit mention of the CGPM endorsement from 1975 could be interpreted to mean that NSW expects that UTC should conform to mean solar time, and thus it should have leaps. -- Steve Allen UCO/Lick Observatory Santa Cruz, CA 95064 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice: +1 831 459 3046 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla PGP: 1024/E46978C5 F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93
Re: GMT -> UTC in Australia
On Wed 2005-02-23T09:07:30 -0700, Rob Seaman hath writ: > A big question throughout all of the UTC discussions over the past five > years is who "they" are and whether they have the ability to form a > clear and consistent intent in the first place. I think that the cast of characters is pretty clear from reading the materials referenced in my bibliography web page. It is very clear that there is a contingent strongly pushing for a "uniform" time scale. > Determining prior > worldwide legal intent - and forming any (hopefully improved) future > international legal consensus on civil time - should both be key to any > proposed change to UTC. Intent is one thing, and practicality is another. >From the evidence referenced in the bibliography I think it is safe to presume that ITU-R sector members have been tasked to induce their local legislators to change the wording of laws from GMT to UTC. I note, however, that as a result of publishing the bibliography these efforts, and the individuals effecting them, have become more difficult to follow. I don't have an international network of spies, and it looks like that's what is now needed if someone really wants to find out who is doing what, and why. So, yes, I am in mildly paranoid agreement with Rob in that there are indications which resemble a secret society trying to subvert the order of the world. On the other hand, by keeping the definition and justification for UTC in a set of proprietary and inaccessible documents, it could be said that UTC has always been in the hands of a secret society. Indeed, that was really true before UTC. In the 1950s when time was still under the control of the astronomers, the decisions were made privately. There is no historical record available which documents the creation of UT0, UT1, and UT2 by those names. All we know is that Markowitz (then president of IAU Comm 31) managed to get the BIH and the various national time bureaus to begin to use them. The general public and legislatures of the world have never had the opportunity to debate the goals behind civil time. Nobody asks for their views on intent. Practically speaking, GMT ceased to exist as a result of three events spread over three decades. 1960s UTC as defined by the BIH with rubber seconds (or elastic seconds) became the de facto standard for national time agencies, and thus the prime meridian for time shifted from the Greenwich transit to the International Meridian defined by the long history of the BIH's averages of all broadcast time signals. To the world at large the effect of changing the length of the second annually and inserting occasional steps of 50 to 100 ms were just as inconsequential as the resetting of the national master clocks had always been. To the technicians in charge of time distribution those changes were extremely impractical. 1972 The CCIR changed UTC to atomic seconds with leaps. Again, to the world at large, the effect of resetting all clocks by a second was inconsequential. To the technicians the leaps were more tolerable than the previous system. 1984 The IAU replaced Newcomb's expressions for UT (and thus UT1) with new expressions which ignored the existence of observations of the sun and which implicitly demanded a globally self-consistent coordinate system. (Ironically such a system had been suggested by the French delegates to the IMC a century earlier, and in the IMC protocols it is evident from his statements that Newcomb had recognized the sense of such a system before he was ushered out by the majority delegates, who were probably mollified by the implications of their own American expert agreeing with the French, because they wanted to assert Greenwich as prime.) 1988 The BIH ceased to exist, being replaced by the IERS. By this date there were effectively no more observations of earth rotation using transit instruments, so all direct connection of time with Greenwich had come to an end. > One has to wonder whether any individuals > involved in the legal UTC debate in Australia were aware of the leap > second controversy in the precision timing community. Yes. But I can't say whether they value the immediate practicality of uniform time over the need to change all time zones by an hour 600 years from now, and more and more often after that. >Whether this was > the case or not, the wording of the quoted article makes it clear that > UTC is being sold to everyday Australians in its original sense of > being a continuing approximation to GMT: Which is consistent with the text of approvals granted to the UTC by the IAU at the General Assembly in 1973 and by the CGPM in 1975 http://www1.bipm.org/jsp/en/ViewCGPMResolution.jsp?CGPM=15&RES=5 Both recognized that UTC with leap seconds provides mean solar time. The draft ITU-R documents which have leaked out indicate disregard f
Re: GMT -> UTC in Australia
Steve Allen writes: Australia has decided to redefine its legal time scale. http://abc.net.au/science/news/space/SpaceRepublish_1307267.htm The last line in the article implies other jurisdictions are doing the same. The exact text of the laws would be interesting in order to see whether they intend that UTC be matched to mean solar days or not. A big question throughout all of the UTC discussions over the past five years is who "they" are and whether they have the ability to form a clear and consistent intent in the first place. Determining prior worldwide legal intent - and forming any (hopefully improved) future international legal consensus on civil time - should both be key to any proposed change to UTC. One has to wonder whether any individuals involved in the legal UTC debate in Australia were aware of the leap second controversy in the precision timing community. Whether this was the case or not, the wording of the quoted article makes it clear that UTC is being sold to everyday Australians in its original sense of being a continuing approximation to GMT: "UTC is adjusted to remain consistent with GMT using "leap seconds" every 18 months." Rob Seaman National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Re: GMT -> UTC in Australia and elsewhere
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Markus Kuhn writes: >It seems that apart from the English versions, they all use an >equivalent of either the French "temps universel" (universal time) or >the German "Weltzeit" (world time). Oddly, of the ones I checked, only >the Danish version explicitely mentiones UTC. And that is actually a mistake because legally Denmark is still using "mean solar time" (in Copenhagen I belive) :-) -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Re: GMT -> UTC in Australia and elsewhere
Steve Allen wrote on 2005-02-23 02:27 UTC: > http://abc.net.au/science/news/space/SpaceRepublish_1307267.htm > The last line in the article implies other jurisdictions are doing the same. Or have done the same long ago ... The EU summer time directive remains agnostic on the issue and (deliberately or accidentally?) blurrs the distinction between GMT and UTC by using different terminology in the twelfe different language versions: http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=eurlex&LANGUAGE=en&DOCID=2001l031p0021 -> English: "Greenwich Mean Time" http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=eurlex&LANGUAGE=de&DOCID=2001l031p0021 -> German: "Weltzeit" http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=eurlex&LANGUAGE=fr&DOCID=2001l031p0021 -> French: "temps universel" http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=eurlex&LANGUAGE=nl&DOCID=2001l031p0021 -> Dutch: "wereldtijd" http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=eurlex&LANGUAGE=da&DOCID=2001l031p0021 -> Danish: "werdenstid (UTC)" http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=eurlex&LANGUAGE=it&DOCID=2001l031p0021 -> Italian: "ora universale" [...] It seems that apart from the English versions, they all use an equivalent of either the French "temps universel" (universal time) or the German "Weltzeit" (world time). Oddly, of the ones I checked, only the Danish version explicitely mentiones UTC. I wonder whether these terms were merely looked up in dictionaries or actually copied from the relevant national legislation. [Also fun is to look up GMT and UTC in the EU terminology database on http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/.] Markus
