Coordinated Universal Time: why and how was it introduced?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

Correct timing is very important in today's world, when the rhythm of life has increased significantly. But the difficulty lies in the presence of different time zones - after all, when communicating with people from other parts of the planet, it is important to have some kind of common reference point. This is what Coordinated Universal Time is for. But how did people come to such a system?

What is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)?

In the modern world, the greatest universality is valued - a single currency, language, etc. But it is simply impossible to introduce a single time zone, because when it is day in one hemisphere, it is night in the other. In addition, there is the so-called local solar time, which goes according to how the stars move across the sky from east to west. But time zones must be connected to each other in some way, have some reference point. That's what UTC - Coordinated Universal Time is for. It is from him that states push off, setting clocks on their territory. But how did such a system come about?

The history of the introduction of a single standard

Initially, mankind determined the time by the Sun. The moment when it passed its highest point was taken as noon. It is on this principle that the sundial worked. But this method was not accurate, in addition, the development of society required greater universality. Over time, when new lands were discovered, and people realized that it was necessary to enter time zones and link them together primarily for navigation purposes, the GSM (Greenwich Mean Time) system was invented, so named due to the fact that the meridian, on which the time was counted, passed through the observatory in Greenwich.

By the way, before the introduction of this standard, different countries used their own zero points. As a rule, the middle meridians in this case passed through local observatories, in France - Paris, in Russia - Pulkovo, etc. But the lack of a single standard was inconvenient. And in 1884, the Greenwich meridian was taken as zero. It is used not only to compare watches, but also to determine geographical coordinates - longitude.

Now this standard is called UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time. Unlike GMT, it is checked against atomic clocks, and every 2-3 years the scale is amended in the form of an "extra" second. This is done in order to bring the time as close as possible to astronomical.

Designation of time zones

Time in other meridians counts downfrom Greenwich. For simplicity, it is designated as the difference with it, that is, UTC + 1, UTC-8, etc. Meridians are not always used to distinguish between time zones, since in some cases this would be somewhat inconvenient. This, incidentally, was the cause of some very interesting features of the countdown in different countries. But more on that later.

Use

So now that it's clear what Coordinated Time is, it's time to discuss how it's used in today's world. Firstly, the zero meridian is still relevant for navigation - both in the ocean and in the air. Secondly, globalization has left its mark on the need for a single reference of time. Conference calls between people located on different parts of the planet are scheduled according to UTC.

By the way, in some territories time zones do not actually exist. We are talking about the Arctic and Antarctic, where the time is conventionally taken as UTC + 0. In fact, the researchers at the polar stations can count the hours as they see fit. The same applies to astronauts working in Earth orbit.

Interesting facts

The system including UTC took a long time to develop, resulting in rather interesting features.

• The abbreviation UTC has no official meaning. In 1970, when this standard was introduced, TUC (Temps Universel Coordonné) and CUT (Coordinated Universal Time) variants were considered. In the end, it was decided to stay in neutralUTC.
• Novosibirsk was founded on two banks of the river, exactly along which the hour meridian passes. And for quite a long time in the city there were two times. Before the construction of the first bridge in 1955, this did not cause any particular inconvenience, because the two parts of Novosibirsk were practically not connected with each other. But in 1958, the city switched to a single countdown.
• Logically, the biggest difference in time between two points on the globe should be 24 hours. But in fact, there are 26 time zones. In the Pacific Ocean, two island states are located relatively close to each other: American Samoa and the Line archipelago. The time difference between them is 25 hours. This happened because the Line Islands, which previously belonged to Great Britain, counted their time from the Australian one, and it turned out to be UTC + 14. And Samoa has UTC-11, in accordance with the difference with continental America.
• In some regions of Australia horizontal time zones sometimes appear. This is because not all states switch to winter time.
• Not always the difference with Greenwich is an even number of hours. UTC+5:45 operates in Nepal, +8:45 in some Australian cities, and +12:45 in the Chatham Archipelago in New Zealand.