[LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <web-21741602 at wap.org>, "Jonathan E. Hardis" writes:

>On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 13:45:24 -0700 Steve Allen 

><sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

>>> What countries do you think are using UT1 (or another time scale with an

>>> astronomical basis) for their legal time, and which would therefore

>>> drift away from those using UTC?

>> 

>> Notably, Denmark.


Actually, that is certainly not the case, no matter how you look
at it.

Although the "law of recogning time" from late 18xx does that, the
current view is that the law was probably formulated that way in
order to make the result of the longitude conference understandable
by the relevant lay people (navigators), rather than as an actual
scientific definition.

That is somewhat creative reading, in order to make the legal
argument fall in place:

The EU directive on summertime superseedes the old law, thereby
defining legal time in Denmark as based on (wait for it...) GMT!

The GMT is clearly an interpreter thing, trying to be helpful,
rather than distiction of definition, as other translations use
UTC, "Weltzeit" and similar terms of art.

So no, clocks in Denmark would be firmly in lockstep with clocks
in the rest of the EU.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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