[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 50, Issue 30

[Steve Allen]

On 2011 Jan 29, at 09:39, Finkleman, Dave wrote:

> In particular, we suggest that the ITU should not own UTC.


The adjective "co-ordinated" in conjunction with Universal Time
occurs in the proceedings of the IAU general assembly of 1961.
The books by Audoin & Guinot and by McCarthy & Seidelmann both
indicate that the system of co-ordination had been agreed upon
by the US and UK during 1959 and was operational by 1960.

Anna Stoyko retired and as of 1964-01 Bernard Guinot was publishing
the BIH circulars.  It was in the first edition under Guinot that
the adjective "co-ordinated" first appears as an acronym "T.U.C"

Nevertheless the resolutions of the IAU general assembly from 1964
contain only the adjective "co-ordinated" and the acronyms "U.T.2"
and "T.U.2" with the recommendations begin that radio broadcasts 
provide UT2.  Similarly the CCIR recommendation which preceded
TF.460 only ever mentioned UT2.  The term UTC does not occur in
any CCIR recommendation until 1970.

McCarthy and Seidelmann indicate that the IAU approved of the name
Coordinated Universal Time with abbreviation UTC during 1965, but
they provide no citation to an original source for that fact.

Audoin and Guinot do not claim credit for coining "UTC" saying that
it was "spontaneously christened", but clearly it originated in
discussions between BIH and the time service bureaus of UK and USNO.

I would like to think that the CCIR (now ITU-R) "took stewardship"
of the name UTC from the agencies who studied earth rotation and
thus measured Universal Time, and that if the broadcasts cease to
be related to rotation then they should relinquish the stewardship.

I had better stop before someone accuses me of imitating Tolkien's
Silmarillion and making that last sentence as an allegory of
The Return of the King.
                                                                                
--
Steve Allen               <sla at ucolick.org>              WGS-84 (GPS)
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