Message text written by John Carmichael >then, on the average, if you read the time directly from a longitudinally corrected dial, your non-EOT corrected reading would be off by about seven minutes on any day of the year.<
That may be the average but the average doesn't have any meaning to the poor client who is trying to read the time in November :-) It's not easy to have a simple formula for such a complex curve. However you could try your clients on the "Ten, Zero, Fives, Twelve" method. That assumes that for the first three months of the year the EoT is (in astronomer's notation !) -10 mins, For the next three months it is zero, over the next 3 months it is spread -5 to +5 mins and for the last three months it is +12 mins. Apart from odd days (like around Christmas) this is correct to about 5 mins if I remember correctly. If you added that EoTis zero around Christmas and New Year then it would be better but that makes it even harder to remember!! Patrick
