NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: half-hour time zones
From: William Trayfors
Date: 2001 Nov 03, 2:37 PM
From: William Trayfors
Date: 2001 Nov 03, 2:37 PM
Dan: Actually, it was weirder before: I lived in Kathmandu from 1972-1976. The time offset from GMT was then + 5 hours and 40 minutes, not 30 minutes. India was and still is +5h 30m and that would never do for Nepal! I believe it remained so for a number of years until, perhaps, 1986. Now, most sources say it's +5h 45m. Go figure :-) Bill At 08:18 PM 11/2/01 -0800, you wrote: >Nepal was 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of GMT until 1986, >and then they decided to get really weird and Nepal is now >5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of GMT! > >Some of the Unix timezone files have some interesting history >about these things. > >Dan Allen > > >-----Original Message----- >From- Navigation Mailing List >[mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM]On Behalf Of Paul Hirose >Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 6:45 PM >To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM >Subject: half-hour time zones > > >Anyone know why some places have time offsets not an integral number >of hours from Greenwich? Like Newfoundland. According to my atlas (a >few years old), standard time there is some hours and 30 minutes >behind Greenwich. > >I don't see any advantage to such an odd time zone, and several >disadvantages. For example, I've heard that some GPS receivers won't >allow fractional hour offsets for the local time display. And my >watch, which has a secondary time zone, is the same way. > >Years ago I wrote a program which had to know the local time offset >from Greenwich, and it accepted any offset, down to decimal seconds if >you wanted. No arbitrary limitations for me! But I can sympathize with >programmers who decline to cater to (or are ignorant of) weird time >zones. > >I'd like to hear how Newfoundland got that time zone. > >-- > > >paulhirose@earthlink.net (Paul Hirose) ______________________________________ Washington Decision Support Group, Inc. Advanced Information Technology Consultants 2401 South Lynn Street, Arlington, VA 22202 Tel 703-838-8784 Fax 703-838-0019