Hacker News Reader

Comment by samizdis | Hacker News Reader

UTC is the successor of GMT, there's no difference other than the name.

I think someone claiming the British created time might not be 100% serious.

It's an interesting question. Clearly the British didn't "invent time", but when the railways became widespread in the UK they needed to have "Railway Time"[0]. Before that each village had their own local time, and it was a mess when trains would arrive or depart minutes earlier or later than expected.

So "Railway Time" was invented in 1840 ... unified across the country, and it created a Time Zone.

Was Britain the first place this happened? I suspect it was.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time

In the context of GMT the importance of time to establishing longitude and the Longitude act[0] seem much more relevant to me. I still think it's a bit of a stretch from that to "created time" though!

Whoever came up with the sundial first would have the claim to having invented time - and the sun's not out often enough in Blighty for them to be a contender :P

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_Act

Dunno. The British have a Timelord, so they seem to take it pretty seriously. ;)

That's not technically correct. The difference is tiny and for most purposes can be ignored, but GMT is based on the mean solar time at Greenwich whereas UTC is based on International Atomic Time.

Doesn’t GMT follow daylight-saving time while UTC does not?

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboututc.shtml

No. Local time in Greenwich is currently 1657, that's 1657 BST (which has daylight saving). It's 1551 GMT. Solar noon today as 1205 GMT.

Just like in New York where it's 1157 Local, or 1157 EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) - 1057 EST (Eastern Standard Time)

And it was approved by the TVA, so...there's that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com