[LEAPSECS] Degrees of Accommodating Time Based on Earth Rotation

[Tony Finch]

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

>Tony Finch wrote:

>>On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

>>>

>>> I may be misremembering, I thought the longitude conference was in 1884 ?

>>

>> Yes, but by that time there had already been 40 years of railway time in

>> the UK. We officially switched to a single time zone in 1880, but local

>> mean solar time had already been given up in most places for most

>> practical purposes by about 1855.

>

> I'm not sure I see that any one country fixes their national time

> as relevant, as the fact that the international community, such as

> it were, argreed to do so.

>

> Not even England in the age of the empire...


Well if those are your criteria then I think 2000 BC as the epoch for
(global) leap day politics is too early. At that time calendars were
all based on local observation. (Actually I think they were all lunar or
lunisolar at that time, so if there was politics it would have been
arguing about when leap months fell, not leap days.)

The Julian reform was an important political event but since it only
affected the Roman Empire it was too local to count.

So perhaps the right date is the Gregorian reform of 1582.

Tony.
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