Dear All, On 9 December, Fred Sawyer reminded us that there will be a leap second at the end of this month. He suggested that the proposal to eliminate Leap Seconds has not been adopted.
It is true that this proposal has not yet been adopted but the proposal has certainly not been abandoned. There was a worrying report in the London Times newspaper of 18 December noting that the ITU is still keen to get rid of Leap Seconds. The Times also printed a defence of the Leap Second by David Rooney (Curator of timekeeping at the Royal Greenwich Observatory) and a further defence by my colleague Markus Kuhn (whose office is next to mine!). I mentioned the report to my friend John Chambers who was Head of the UK Time Service from 1993 to 1996 and prompted him to write a letter to the Times giving his views. His letter, as published, can be found at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5385619.ece His letter, as sent (before the Letters Editor got hold of it!), can be found below my signature. Very diplomatically, he notes that it really is no business of the ITU to mess about with Civil Time. Unfortunately, the published version leaves out John's note about sundials. [Do Times readers have no interest in these instruments?] Equally unfortunately, the published version leaves out the important comment that those who want an unchanging timescale can use GPS time. Moreover, GPS time is provided free! Best wishes Frank King Cambridge, UK ==== Original Letter about Leap Seconds as sent to the Times ==== Letters to the Editor, The Times - [This letter is sent exclusively to The Times] Sir, Any intention to interfere with the current worldwide arrangements for civil time by minutes, or even hours (third leader and report (page 8) December 18, letters December 19, 20) are surely beyond the competence of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The ITU's scope extends only to time signals as broadcast. Reform of civil time is as important as calendar reform, where the ramifications of the Vatican initiative in 1582 took hundreds of years to settle. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is a compromise which has served us well since 1972 as the basis for time zones. It provides a timescale within one second of mean solar time for everyday use. It has seconds markers coincident with the more regular atomic timescale used, for example, in GPS and deep-space navigation. The two are simply related: GPS time is 14s ahead of UTC until after the leap second at the end of this month, then it will be 15s ahead. Sundials are used worldwide to tell the time, requiring neither fuel nor moving parts. Some can be read to an accuracy of better than a minute. Traditional navigation, based on observation of sun and stars, loses less than 400 metres in accuracy when UTC is used. However much train time- keeping improves we can live within these limits in everyday life. Those who need to live a precise life, or whose systems depend on there being 60 seconds in every minute, can already use GPS time. There is no need for another time scale. (Mr) John Chambers (Head of UK Time Service 1993-96) Koskenpääntie 79, 42300 Jämsänkoski, Finland --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
