#GMT

[scotianostra]

January 29th 1848 saw the first adoption of GMT by Scotland. The subject has been the source of controversy ever since.

The change had broadly taken place south of the Border from September the previous year with those in Edinburgh living 12 and-a-half minutes behind the new standard time as a result.

Some people in those days were still using sundials to tell the time, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain had only given the world the first electric clock 7 years previously. Sundials were criticised for being poorly made and set by "incompetents" among those who supported the move to GMT in the 1840s.

The discrepancy grew the further west you moved, with the time in Glasgow some 17 minutes behind GMT. In Ayr the time difference was 18-and-a-half minutes with it rising to 19 minutes in the harbour town of Greenock.

All these lapses were ironed out over night on January 29 1848, but the move wasn’t without controversy as some resisted the move away from local time.

Sometimes referred to as natural time, it had long been determined by sun dials and observatories and later by charts and tables which outlined the differences between GMT and local time at various locations across the country.

But the need for a standard time measurement was broadly agreed upon given the surge in the number of rail services and passengers with different local times causing confusion, missed trains and even accidents as trains battled for clearance on single tracks.

An editorial in The Scotsman on Saturday, January 28, 1848, said: “It is a mistake to think that in the country generally the change will be felt as a grievance in any degree.

“Probably nine-tenths of those who have clocks and watches believe that their local time is the same with Greenwich time, and will be greatly surprise to learn that the two are not identical.

“Even if they wished to keep local time, they want the means.

“Observatories are only found in two or three of our Scottish towns.

“As for the sundials in use, their number is small, most of them, too, are made by incompetent persons and even when correctly constructed, the task of putting them up and adjusting them to the meridian is generally left to an ignorant mason, who perhaps takes the mid-day hour from the watch in his fob.”

The editorial added: “For the sake of convenience, we sacrifice a few minutes and keep this artificial time in preference to sundial time, which some call natural time, and if the same convenience counsels us to sacrifice a few minutes in order to keep one uniform time over the whole country, why should it not be done!”

Mariners had long observed Greenwich Mean Time and kept at least one chronometer set to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was considered to have a longitude of zero degrees.

The move to enforce it as the common time measurement was made by the Railway Clearing House in September 1847.

Some rail companies had printed GMT timetables much sooner. The Great Western Railway deployed the standard time in 1840 given that passengers on its service between London to Bristol, then the biggest trading port with the United States, faced a time difference of 22 minutes between its departure and arrival point.

Rory McEvoy, curator of horology at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said travel watches of the day had two sets of hands, one gold and one blue steel, to help measure changes in local time during a journey.

Maps also depicted towns with had adopted GMT and those which had not, he added.

There was information out there for determine the local time difference so they would know the offset to apply to GMT before the telegraphic distribution of time.

Mr McEvoy said different towns and cities in Scotland would have had their own time differences before adoption of GMT.

Old local time measurements show that Edinburgh was four-and-a-half minutes ahead of that in Glasgow, for example.

Mr McEvoy added: “I think it is fair to say there was no real concept of these differences at the time. It was when communication began to expand quite rapidly that it became f an issue. I think generally, you would be quite happy that the time of day was your local time.”

Pics are the station clock at Glasgow Central in the early 1880s and the sundial at Stonehaven Harbour, Aberdeenshire.

[precisioninstruments]

[shachormet]

[babysdrivers]

"we are checking" which is italian for "read at 3:33pm ✔️"

[vinchesidesigns]

The bumblebee with my Liberty>1776 bracelet design, #morsecodebracelet

[j-h-s]

[gmagblog]

Explorer ii black dial

[american-denim-parano]

[moonwatchuniverse]

60 years ago… Deke Slayton In November 1963, Donald "Deke" Slayton resigned from his commission in the US Air Force after he was permanently disqualified from flying in space and became a civilian executive for NASA, becoming director of Flight Crew Operations in early 1966. On March 13, 1972, after a medications treatment, NASA announced that Deke Slayton had returned to flight status. In July 1975, Slayton flew as Docking Module Pilot during the historic Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. Photos show that Slayton had been wearing Accutron & Accutron “Astronaut” pilot watches between 1962 and 1973. (Photo: NASA)

[vintageadsmakemehappy]

1973 Rolex GMT Master advertisement with Pan Am

[precisioninstruments]

[shachormet]

[aroundtheworldinstamps]

Four stamps commemorating the Greenwich Meridian. These are pretty personal to me as I went to uni in Greenwich. You'd be able to see a bit of the uni in the 3rd picture if the stupid queen's head wasn't there.

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

Happy 2025 (from the uk)

[roleplayfinder]

🫀 Hello, people! I’m a 20-year-old writer, and I use she/her pronouns. My time zone is GMT and English is not my first language, so apologies in advance. I’m looking for a RP partner (18+) to write some plots (OC x OC, no RPF) with historical settings.

Two acquaintances (FxM) meet before WW1, and they are immediately torn apart by the recruitment of the M character. Later, they reunite again, now in France, during the war because the F character becomes a nurse near the place where the M character is. I would prefer to write the F character! No problems if I have to write the M character. The M character will get injured at some point in the process. We can discuss the plot if you are interested. I have some ideas for both, if needed!

A wealthy secretary (now working for detectives, or another force, still undefined) and a local courtesan join forces to find out about the powerful people and the unknown of their city (could be FxF or FxM as well). I thought about this one only a few weeks ago, so it’s not very clear, that’s why I also would like to act it out. Probably set in New York in the early 1900s, and it would involve a lot of espionage and missions, they would become partners in a way.

Some more information: I consider myself to be Literate, and I tend to do Mirrored writing as well. I prefer to write on Discord, but I don’t mind if you prefer it here. I’m also able to write in Portuguese!

Please react, and I’ll contact you.

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