Hello & welcome to this week’s GK Nugget.
October 13 marks the day on which the Greenwich (pronounced Gren-itch, not Green-which) Meridian in UK was established by the International Meridian Conference in 1884 as the starting point for measuring time zones across the globe.
So on its 132ndanniversary, we’re going to look at why it was important to establish GMT in the 19th century, why it’s still significant and also at some quirky facts about time.
GMT was born at the world-famous Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, established in 1675 by Charles II. According to the Observatory’s website, the site “is, by international decree, the official starting point for every new day, year and millennium“. The growth of shipping & railroad travel led to great confusion about the correct time at different parts of the globe which made it necessary to establish the prime meridian.
The Greenwich Meridian maintains a position of Longitude 0,0,0 and Latitude 51, 28, 38N (North of the Equator). Timezones are established based on how far east or west (so longitude is used as a measure) a country is from the Greenwich Meridian.
Although GMT and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) share the same current time in practice, GMT is a time zone officially used in a majority of European and African countries, while UTC is not a time zone, but a time standard that is the basis for civil time and time zones worldwide. This means that no country or territory officially uses UTC as a local time.
Also, UTC is based on atomic time and is far more accurate than the reliance of solar time from a particular spot on the Earth’s surface.
Neither UTC nor GMT ever change for Daylight Saving Time (DST). However, some of the countries that use GMT switch to different time zones during their DST period. (e.g. UK uses British Summer Time (BST), which is one hour ahead of GMT, during the summer months).
Daylight Saving Time is used to save energy and make better use of daylight. It was first used in 1908 in Thunder Bay, Canada.
Germany became the first country to introduce DST when clocks were turned ahead 1 hour on April 30, 1916. The rationale was to minimize the use of artificial lighting in order to save fuel for the war effort during World War I.
We all know that India is 5.30 hours ahead of GMT, but Nepal is 5.45 hours ahead while Chatham Island (New Zealand) is 12.45 hours ahead of GMT & Western Australia is 8.45 hours ahead.
Usually, when one travels in an easterly direction – a different time zone is crossed every 15 degrees of longitude (which is equal to one hour in time – 24 hours multiplied by 15 degrees gives us a 360 degrees globe), except in Japan which is 2 hours behind Vladivostock which is to the West of Japan.
Most of mainland Spain is either on the same longitude as or further west than the UK. And yet, Spain is an hour ahead, time-wise.
Prior to 1995, International Date Line split the country of Kiribati. The result was that the eastern part of Kiribati was a whole day and two hours behind the western part of the country where its capital is located. In 1995 Kiribati decided to move the International Date Line far to the east- which placed the entire country into the same day.
Although Russia is geographically spread over 11 time zones, it officially observes only 9 time zones (from March 2010).
China observes one time zone UTC/GMT + 08:00 – which makes this time zone uncommonly wide. In the extreme western part of China the sun is at its highest point at 15:00, in the extreme eastern part – at 11:00
The International Space Station uses UTC/GMT.
Unfortunately, Dr Emmett Brown & Marty McFly famous DeLorean time machine hasn’t become a reality yet so the only time travel that we’ll be doing for a while is traversing across time zones.
That’s all on this weekend’s GK Nugget.
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