On 08/23/10 03:51, Jamie wrote:
The International Atlas says that the city and country have observed a time zone of -1 (Central Europe Time) since 1960. Before that the time zone was 0 (UT).
My copy of the International Atlas (6th edition, dated 2003) also says this: Before 1 Jan 1912 LMT Begin Standard 15W00 1 Jan 1912 0:00 1:00 Begin Standard 0W00 26 Feb 1934 0:00 0:00 which means that Niamey observed a time zone of -0100 (1 hour west of UTC) between 1912 and 1934. This is the offset in question.
The Wikipedia article on Niamey says
Wikipedia itself is not reliable on these issues, unless it cites sources.
The PC Atlas uses WAT for UTC-1...
AstrolDeluxe displays West Central Africa Time (WCAT) = -1...
These are clearly invented abbreviations, just as the TZ abbreviation is invented. Microsoft says that the "West Central Africa time zone" is +0100 (1 hour east of UTC). See <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd796927.aspx>. All the other uses of the phrase "West Central Africa time" (that I found with Google) agree with Microsoft.
Perhaps a different term (I propose WCAT) would straighten out the ambiguity
"WCAT" would be problematic for reasons described above. Ambiguity per se is not a problem in the tz database, as it exists in many other places (e.g., "EST" in the U.S. versus Australia). It's not entirely clear that this Niamey time zone actually existed; it might just be a typo. Until it's verified, it's not clear that it's worth the effort to invent a new abbreviation for it.