[LEAPSECS] coffin nails, write your senators for mean solar time

Steve Allen sla at ucolick.org
Sat Jul 28 11:53:46 EDT 2007


On Sat 2007-07-28T07:40:02 -0700, Peter Vince hath writ:

> Atlantic, but I had a look anyway. Quite large documents, but I couldn't

> find much about time - apart from timezone definitions - what were you

> trying to show us?


I don't know why the Thomas service refuses to provide links which
are valid for more than a few minutes, but the only way to get to
the actual bill text is to go there and drill in with the temporary
links that they provide.

HR 2272, Title IV (NIST)
'Sec 2 (Metric system defined)
(4) Modifies the 1918 Calder Act which is 15 U.S.C. 264
and adds section
'(b) which defines UTC for the sake of the US.

The original 1918 Calder act specified "mean astronomical time".
Enforcement of that act was suspended within a couple of years
until sufficient chaos had been wrought that congress acted again.

When it was amended to standardize time zones and daylight savings
in 1966 congress had been informed that there was more than one
sort of mean time in astronomy, so the current text reads
"mean solar time".

--
Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855
University of California Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015
Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m


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