Sunday, June 8, 2014

What time is it now, for goodness sake?

Easy - 'standard time', they say. This is the time set for a particular area of the earth's surface, adopted for the sake of clarity and good timekeeping.The zones are measured from Greenwich - i.e., New York, which is placed on the 75th meridian west of Greenwich, is five hours slow, compared to Greenwich time. Tokyo uses the 135th meridian east of Greenwich, and is nine hours in advance of Greenwich time - so when it is noon in Tokyo it is 3 a.m., GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). There are however endless complications for astrologers attempting to discover how a local time historically relates to Greenwich: at the turn of the century seven European countries and most of the countries of South America were still refusing to accede to GMT; others changed to GMT then changed back. There was in addition - and continues to be - local adaptation of 'summer time', and sometimes in emergency 'double summer time'. Good luck, chaps!



-          from Parkers’ Encyclopaedia of Astrology (Watkins, ISBN 978-1-905857-71-5

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