Today
1884 Greenwich in London established as the universal time meridian of longitude or GMT. Not to be confused with the date of 22nd October, which is the date that 25 other other countries adopted it.
I used to know all the following by heart when I was in the 3rd company REP because I was studying for my
Permis Hauturier or high seas boat license.
In case anyone is too busy to read further it should be noted that GMT is has been replaced by UCT=
Universal Time Coordinated
Prior to 1972, this
time was called Greenwich
Mean Time (GMT) but is now referred to as Coordinated Universal
Time or Universal
Time Coordinated (
UTC). It is a coordinated
time scale, maintained by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM).
If you are still reading this, you may be interested to note that 0 degrees longitude is actually 102 metres out.
Time Zone History of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom started using Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as its standard time in 1880. It remained the base of civil time in the world until 1972.
The Shepherd Gate Clock showed GMT first.
©iStockphoto.com/zoranm
The United Kingdom was among the first countries to use a
standard time for the whole country, replacing the practice of each place keeping its own
local mean time.
The EU wants to scrap DST. What about Brexit?
“Railway Time”
With the introduction of the railway, travel became faster. With every station keeping its own local mean time, the need for a synchronized time arose.
The first railway company to implement a common time for all stations, appropriately named “Railway Time,” was the Great Western Railway in November 1840. By 1847, most railways were using “London Time,” the time set at the Royal Observatory in
Greenwich.
In 1847, the Railway Clearing House, an industry standards body, recommended that
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) be adopted at all stations as soon as the General Post Office permitted it. On December 1, 1847, the London and North Western Railway, as well as the Caledonian Railway, adopted “London Time,” and by 1848 most railways had followed.
Unofficial GMT
By 1844, almost all towns and cities in Britain had adopted GMT, though the time standard received some resistance, with railway stations keeping local mean time and showing “London Time” with an additional minute hand on the clock.
In 1862, the Great Clock of Westminster, popularly known as Big Ben, was installed. Though not controlled by the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, it received hourly time signals from Greenwich and returned signals twice daily.
Standard Time Adopted
However, it was not until 1880 that the British legal system caught up with the rest of the country. It had stuck to local mean time for years, leading to oddities such as polls opening at 08:13 (8:13 am) and closing at 16:13 (4:13 pm) during some elections.
With the
Statutes (Definition of Time) Act (43 & 44 Vict.), Greenwich Mean Time was legally adopted throughout the island of Great Britain on August 2, 1880.
Ireland replaced Dublin Mean Time with GMT in 1916.
GMT World Standard
In 1884 GMT was adopted as the international standard for civil time at the
International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., USA. It remained the standard until 1972 when it was replaced with
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
UTC is still primarily based on the
solar time on the prime meridian (0°
longitude) near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
British Summer Time (BST)
The English have not only pioneered standard time. It was also an Englishman who was responsible for the
invention of Daylight Saving Time (DST), or
summer time, as it is commonly known as in the UK.
In 1907, English builder William Willett published a pamphlet called
The Waste of Daylight, campaigning to advance clocks at the beginning of the spring and summer months and to return to GMT in the autumn. He wanted to encourage people to get out of bed earlier in summer.
Willett spent the rest of his life fighting for his time-shifting scheme but died of influenza before DST was implemented.
Rejected Bill
The
1908 Daylight Saving Bill was the 1st attempt in the UK to move clocks forward 1 hour in summer. The idea was to provide more daylight hours after work for the training of the Territorial Army, to reduce railway accidents, and to reduce lighting expenses. The House of Commons rejected the Bill.
However, across the Atlantic a British colony in Canada made history. On
July 1, 1908, the residents of Port Arthur, Ontario, today's Thunder Bay, turned their clocks forward by 1 hour to start the world's first DST period.
Wartime Energy Saver
In 1916, during World War I,
Germany was the 1st country in the world to use DST nationwide, and the UK followed just weeks later. To save energy and help the war effort, the
Summer Time Act 1916 advanced the clocks in the UK for 1 hour from
May 21 until October 1 in the same year.
Summer time, or DST, proved so popular that it was named
British Summer Time (BST) and the seasonal practice kept.
The pros and cons of DST
“British Double Summer Time”
There have been periods in UK history where DST was 2 hours ahead of standard time. This is known as “British Double Summer Time” (BDST), “Double Summer Time,” or “Double British Summer Time.”
During
World War II the UK went on an extended DST period from February 25, 1940 to October 7, 1945, effectively adding 1 hour to the time zone (UTC+1). During the DST period in the summer, another hour was added to the time zone (UTC+2).
There was another period of
BDST in 1947, which was brought on by severe fuel shortages in the country.
3 Years of Summer Time
In a trial known as the British Standard Time experiment, the UK kept Daylight Saving Time hours permanently from
February 1968 to November 1971. Although the experiment resulted in fewer traffic incidents because darkness fell 1 hour later on the clock, it was found that there was a slight increase in incidents in the darker morning hours. The experiment was abandoned in 1972 because of its unpopularity—particularly in the north of the country, where days are generally shorter.
Summer Time All Year Round?
Over the past few decades, there have been frequent unsuccessful attempts in the UK parliament to make changes to the current system. Campaigners for the return to “British Double Standard Time,” or a permanent British Summer Time, argue that an extra hour of light in the afternoon could mean fewer road accidents, more leisure time, and a boost to tourism and energy efficiency.
- In 2010, the UK government discussed “Single / Double Summer Time,” where the local time is 1 hour ahead of GMT during the winter and 2 hours in the summer.
- The Daylight Saving Bill 2010-12 proposed to put the UK on permanent BST, but it was not passed in the House of Commons.
Time in the UK Today
Today the
United Kingdom observes
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) during the winter months and
British Summer Time (BST) in the summer months.
The country follows the same DST schedule as
most of Europe, setting the clocks forward 1 hour on the last Sunday in March and back again 1 hour on the last Sunday in October.
