GEORGI DOBROVOLSKI SOLAR OBSERVATORY
26 B MICHAELS AVENUE
ELLERSLIE
AUCKLAND 1005
NEW ZEALAND
E-MAIL; address@hidden WEBSITE; http://www.cv-helios.net/gdso
Dear Sirs,
With regard to your 'GNU tar' web pages that you have authored , (partially reproduced below), and to be fair on the international time-keeping community, could you please change 'Universal (Coordinated) Time' to the correct term of '(Coordinated) Universal Time' in any future 'editions'. The abbreviations, UT & UTC, are CORRECT.
The logic behind this is that, there are 7 Universal Times (all within 1 second of each other), and UTC is the "coordinated version of 'Universal Time'", hence the word order of Coordinated Universal Time.
The abbreviation UTC is a language-independent international abbreviation, it is neither English nor French. It means both 'Coordinated Universal Time' and 'Temps Universel Coordonné'.
I appreciate that this might sound 'picky', but knowing what I know about the total misuse of the term GMT, (proper GMT was originally measured from Greenwich mean mid-day, not mid-night [proof: Astronomical Almanacs 1984 onwards, page B5]), I feel that people should be educated correctly from the word 'go'.
UTC is not the same as GMT, as UTC is an ATOMIC time-scale, while GMT (strictly speaking UT1 [UT-one]) is tied to the rotation of the Earth in respect to the fictitious 'mean Sun'. UTC is, however, kept within 0.9 seconds of UT1, by virtue of leap seconds.
For the term 'Coordinated Universal Time' (UTC), I refer you to the following websites;
http://www.bipm.fr/enus/5_Scientific/c_time/time_server.html (BIPM Time Section; the world's GOVERNING BODY for civil atomic time-scales.),
http://www.bipm.fr/enus/5_Scientific/c_time/time_1.html (BIPM Time Section), (for the French version of these two web pages, click on 'Version française'.)
http://www.iers.org/iers/earth/rotation/utc/utc.html (The International Earth Rotation Service),
http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/time/time.html (The Royal Observatory Greenwich),
http://ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/chronos/GMT-explained.html (a good history of UTC and GMT),
http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-009/_1277.htm (US. National Institute of Standards & Technology),
http://www.npl.co.uk/npl/ctm/time_scales.html (UK's National Physical Laboratory),
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/systime.html &
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/UT.html (US Naval Observatory),
http://www.itu.int/radioclub/rr/arts02.htm (The International Telecommunications Union).
You can also listen to NIST's short-wave Radio Station WWV on 2.5, 5, 10, 15 or 20MHz;
or phone +1-303-499-7111 (a toll call to Boulder, Colorado) for accurate time of day and CORRECT word order.
Time is also available from Canadian Radio Station CHU on 3.33, 7.335 or 14.67 MHz (in both English and French).
Could you please correct 'Universal Coordinated Time' to the correct term of 'Coordinated Universal Time', as soon as practicable.
SECOND ERROR: The line " -1200 `NZDT' for New Zealand Daylight" should read " -1300 `NZDT' for New Zealand Daylight" as NZDT is 13 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Howard Barnes.
(I have 23 years casual research into time-keeping behind me; and was, in effect, taught by personnel of the old Bureau International de l'Heure [BIH, The International Time Bureau].)
The GDSO three-panel two-fold PDF pamphlet "A Briefer History of Time" is available at;
http://www.cv-helios.net/gdso/time(2001).pdf .
---------- Reproduction of your relevant web page(s) ----------
Errors rendered in bold red.
10.4: Timezone item
A timezone item specifies an international timezone, indicated by a small set of letters. Any included period is ignored. Military timezone designations use a single letter. Currently, only integral zone hours may be represented in a timezone item. See the previous section for a finer control over the timezone correction.
Here are many non-daylight-savings-time timezones, indexed by the zone hour value.
+000
`GMT' for Greenwich Mean, `UT' or `UTC' for Universal (Coordinated), `WET' for Western European and `Z' for militaries.
-1200 `NZDT' for New Zealand Daylight.
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