[LEAPSECS] King Charles

[Tony Finch]

Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

> It was King Charles II who oversaw the inception of GMT.
> If King Charles III lives as long as his mother then
> he will oversee the conclusion of GMT.

George Wilkins wrote (in section 5.5.6.1):

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/manuscripts-university-archives/significant-archival-collections/royal-0-5

: The change [to UTC] had two additional consequences for the UK. [...]
: Secondly, the signal continued to be known as the Greenwich time signal
: and it was normally referred to as GMT. Thus once again, the meaning of
: GMT was ambiguous, as this abbreviation was used for both Greenwich mean
: solar time, which closely followed the variations in the rotation of the
: Earth and was the argument in the tables in the navigational almanacs,
: and for coordinated universal time, which was based on International
: Atomic Time (TAI). A change in the meaning of GMT had previously
: occurred in 1925 when the start of the day in the Nautical Almanac was
: changed from noon to midnight to conform with civil practice and with
: the recommendations of the prime meridian conference in 1884. The
: Nautical Almanac continued to use GMT with its original meaning, but it
: eventually changed to the heading “UT (GMT)”. Sadler mourned the change
: in the meaning of GMT and used to wear a black tie to mark the
: occasions, usually on New Year’s Eve, when a leap second was introduced.

So if you agree with Donald Sadler, has already GMT concluded. And that's
certainly true in a practical sense, since decades ago the RGO ceased to
maintain GMT as a form of UT1 or UT2. RGO stopped runing their PZT in 1984
and NPL took sole responsibility for the UK's time standards in 1985.

-- 
Tony Finch  <dot at dotat.at>  https://dotat.at/
Faeroes: Cyclonic, becoming north or northeast, 4 to 6. Moderate. Rain
or showers. Good, occasionally moderate.