Talk:Time zone

Please delet the "The Time around the World" link. Some times there are wrong. In Paris is a winter/summer time. The page doesn't know that. So the time on the page if one hour to early (Sorry for my bad English)

---

So brazil adds an hour (daylight savings time) during whose summer? Dec/Jan summer, or the Northern hemisphere's summer?
~ender 2003-09-12 06:53:MST

Brazil adds an hour only in the southern portions of its time zones during the southern hemisphere summer--no DST in the equatorial regions. -- Joe Kress 06:06, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

So, uh, Spain has both UTC and UTC+1 time? At the same time, no less. How's that? ~Marnevel

Is Argentina UTC-4 (text) or UTC-3 (map)? Paul Beardsell 00:56, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Both of these points were corrected by someone. -- Joe Kress 06:06, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

Not all parts of Brazil incorporate summer time. For the most part, only the southern part of Brazil observes summer time. Some towns will however incorporate summer time if there is an energy shortage. But the closer you get to the equator and the further you get into the Amazon, the fewer the towns that use summer time. Additionally, the dates from when summer time starts to when it ends can change from year to year. Each year the government will determine when and if summer time will be used. Summer time can begin anywhere from the beginning of October to the beginning of November. Summer time can end anywhere from early February to early March. As for Argentenia, is UTC -3 hours and summer time (daylight saving time) is not currently used. ganteng

Contents

1 What about Universal Time Zones? 2 GMT/UTC 3 Åland Islands 4 List of time zones and contained areas 5 Sudan 6 Kazakhstan 7 Local time 8 Removing protection 9 UTC vs GMT

What about Universal Time Zones?

Someone smarter than me needs to incorporate elements from this article (http://www.virtualtravelog.net/entries/000031.html) about the difference between Universal time zones and Local Civil time zones. And are things like "MSK - Moscow Time Zone" an internationally recognized designation? Saudi Arabia is in that zone, but I doubt they discuss Moscow much. Mackerm 22:30, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The referenced article has several errors, the major being that there is no international treaty concerning time zones. These 15° 'International Time Zones' were proposed by Fleming, but were assigned these letters only after WWII (Fleming used a different letter system). They may be applicable somewhere, like on the high seas and over radio--they do not legally exist over land (I even have my doubts about the 'military' explanation). Rather, each country specifies its own time zones as it sees fit. Many (most?) time zone abbreviations are customary, not legal. For example, EST, EDT, etc. in the United States are customary only--only full words appear in the US time zone law: U.S. Law 15USC260-267 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/ch6schIX.html)
Joe Kress 06:06, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

Thanks for the U.S. law. It prompts another question which has been bothering me about this page: Some of the zones include the word "Zone" in their names, and some don't, e.g., "Bering Standard Time" vs. "Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time Zone". In examining the U.S. code, I never saw the words "Eastern Standard Time Zone". But since multiple countries on a longitude can pick their own names, it seems a losing battle anyway. Mackerm 07:15, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The zone codes (such as "ZULU") are most assuredly of military origin - I used them all the time in the service. In communications the message is always dated by ZULU/UTC/GMT, and local time was often referred to when documenting events using the local zone code (i.e. "ROMEO" or "UNIFORM" for the U.S. West Coast). These zone codes are standardized throughout the U.S. military, and are part of NATO standardization.

The military may or may not have assigned letters (like Z, R, and U) to the time zones. But I am certain that their pronunciation (like ZULU, ROMEO, and UNIFORM) was NOT developed by any military — the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) developed it between 1947 and 1956. Military aircraft and radio have to use it because their countries are members of the ICAO (and the International Telecommunication Union ITU). NATO had nothing whatsoever to do with 'standardizing' the alphabet, because it does not appear in any NATO publication, and I have looked through many NATO publications trying to find it. If you know of such a NATO publication, please reveal its title. For a more detailed history see the NATO phonetic alphabet. Please sign your contribution in some way. — Joe Kress 08:15, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

GMT/UTC

This says that UTC is the official term. Official according to whom? In the UK the official term is GMT I think. Mark Richards 22:42, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, GMT is not exactly equal to UTC. You can get some information about that at e.g. http://sts.sunyit.edu/timetech/gmt-utc.html, or in the Greenwich Mean Time article. --Mormegil 11:02, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Åland Islands

Can anybody provide the time zone information for the Åland Islands? Sweden is UTC+1, Finland is UTC+2. So neither would be a safe bet, I think. Marian Steinbach, 17:15, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Åland Islands both belong to Finland and are in the Finnish time zone (UTC+2). The CIA map at the beginning of the article would show their time zone as brown (UTC+2), not green (UTC+1), if it were properly downloaded as a pdf file. A suitable source is Standard Time Zones of the World (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world_maps/world_time_ref802649_1999.pdf) from the University of Texas library (806KB). A magnification of at least 800X is needed. Joe Kress 02:04, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

During standard time, Åland is UTC + 2 hours. During daylight saving time (summer time), Åland is UTC +3 hours. It might be easier to find information about Åland Island if you do searches for the capital city of the region which is Mariehamn (sometimes spelled as Maarianhamina). ganteng

List of time zones and contained areas

I find the method of listing parts of countries (for example spain/Canary Islands) misleading. It is not clear (until you look through all other zones) that there is more than one entry. Someone unfamiliar with the topic could assume it's Spain and Canary Islands that are in UTC zone, not just the Canary Islands as part of Spain. Unfortunately I currently have no good idea on how to remedy this effectively. --Deelkar 14:21, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So, uh, Spain has both UTC and UTC+1 time? At the same time, no less. How's that? ~Marnevel

Spain has two different hours because the Canary Islands are always one hour earlier -- they are too far off to the West to have the same time zone as mainland Spain.

I think one could use bolded or underlined to denote mainland Timezone entries, and italics for islands or other parts of the country with a different TZ.--Deelkar (talk) 01:04, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Underlining is obtained via <u>underlining</u>. A significant problem with underlining is that it is easily confused with wikilinks. Such highlighting would not accomplish its purpose here if the main country still appears directly above the possession. Thus I recommend deleting the independent country directly above the possession and no longer indenting the possession. Anyone unfamiliar with the possession can simply follow its wikilink to find its ruling independent country. The independent country for those without wikilinks can be indicated in parentheses. This would work for isolated possessions, but if several possessions or states are in a single time zone the heading serves a useful purpose by collecting them, especially those possessions that are unfamiliar, like Russian oblasts. So I don't recommend deleting the heading for multiple possesions like states. — Joe Kress 07:48, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

small remark: russian oblasts are not possessions, but administrative divisions, similar to US states, german Länder, or various provinces. But the argument remains valid, large countries lay in several timezones, but its divisions usually in one zone. Peter.

Sudan

What is the timezone of Sudan? UTC +2 or +3? The page of Sudan says +2, while the page of Timezone says +3?

Kazakhstan

The map produced by CIA partitioned Kazakhstan into +5 and +6, while ths page of Time zone states +4 to +6. (So is the Kazakhstan page). --chochopk

According to Oscar van Vlijmen (http://home-4.tiscali.nl/~t876506/TZworld.html#rus), Kazakhstan "does no longer observe DST since 2005-03-15. The central time zone with UTC+5 merged with the western time zone with UTC+4 to form one UTC+5 zone, by the end of 2004." --Chochopk 08:16, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Local time

I recently added local time as a redirect to time zone, and subsequently bolded local time in the article, on the presumption that it is a common phrase used in reference to the time at a particular location, and is appropriate in many contexts to refer to such a time. (For example, the local time in Brisbane, Australia, is 10:23 PM.) I would just revert to my previous edit, but the calculating local time article leaves me a little unsatisfied (I considered redirecting local time to there, but time zone seemed closer to the usual meaning). Could anyone comment on the relationship between the above-mentioned articles? Ben Cairns 12:29, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC).

Calculating local time was apparently written by the same person who began the time zone article because of the similarity between them. Moreover, I see no need for calculating local time — subtracting one time zone from another seems to be so obvious as to not need explanation. I recommend merging calculating local time into time zone by simply adding one sentence about it to time zone, leaving calculating local time as a redirect itself. — Joe Kress 07:48, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Meanwhile, I've put local time back in with a minor edit. Ben Cairns 00:33, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC).

If you look at other pages, the only phrases bolded in the introduction are ones that are redirects to the same page. It is a formatting thing, according to the manual of style: If the subject of the article has more than one name, each new form of the name should be in bold on its first appearance. Unless the subject (i.e. time zones) is also named "local time" then it should not be bolded lest it be confused that it might be an alternate name for the article.--User:Sunborn/si 23:15, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi :) The italicised version reads just fine except that local time is in fact a redirect (give it a try; I put it in myself before bolding it the first time). Sorry, I should have been more clear in my edit summary when I changed it back. I couldn't find a policy on bolding redirects that weren't synonyms, but I've reverted it back to bold because it doesn't look like a separate local time article is likely (or desirable) any time soon, and I believe it's a legitimate thing that people might want to look up. Bolding it indicates that this is the article in which it is discussed. I won't change it again, but there are my reasons. Cheers, Ben Cairns 23:29, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC).

Sorry, completely my fault. It is just that it doesn't appear on "what links here" page. I guess there are over 500 pages that link to Time Zone. I did look over that list twice. My appolgies. --User:Sunborn/si 05:41, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Removing protection

An extensive discussion regarding the Time Cube edit war has been taking place at Talk:Greenwich Mean Time#Time Cube discussion. I hope the issues have been resolved for now and am unprotecting this page. — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

UTC vs GMT

The article implies that UTC and GMT are the same. I don't believe that this is the case. IIUC, GMT is defined as a number of days (rotations of the earth relative w.r.t. the sun) and UTC is defined as a number of SI seconds (oscillations of cesium atom, or some such thing). I think that the following link may explain the difference: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part3/

Also, as someone has commented already, the GMT article explains the difference. -- Wmarkham 16:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, everywhere that the article implies that GMT and UTC are the same is appropriate. They are indeed synonyms as far as the BBC is concerned as the article states and as your own citation states: "BBC still uses this abbreviation [GMT] for patriotic reasons ;-) as a synonym for UTC" (and in Greenwich itself). The other place is in maritime usage where GMT is also a synonym for UTC. And of course, UTC did not exist before 1972 thus GMT is the only correct term to use in the history section. I've change the two true errors in the "List" explanation. — Joe Kress 06:42, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

You're right. Re-reading the article, it does make the difference clear. Thanks for looking at this, though. I'm sorry about my confusion. -- Wmarkham 02:36, 5 May 2005 (UTC)