[LEAPSECS] Java JSR-310 TAIInstant class

[Steve Allen]

On 2011 Jan 29, at 17:34, Steve Allen wrote:

> So I caution that JSR-310 is really creating a new time scale which

> cannot be extrapolated into the past and which will only cause

> confusion by claiming the name TAI when it cannot be TAI.


and if the BIPM follows through with the suggestion that the CCTF
made to ITU-R WP7A in 2007, which is "suppressing TAI", then it
make a lot of sense to define your own uniform time scale with
its own name and to assert nothing more than that during certain 
ranges of time it happens to have the characteristics of TAI.

The history is that when the Admiralty re-defined GMT as of 1925-01-01
it was no longer possible to tell whether any time stamp expressed
as GMT meant "old GMT" or "new GMT".  The need for an unambiguous
way to communicate a precision time stamp is the reason that the
IAU coined the term "Universal Time".
                                                                                
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