From: "Ciro Discepolo" <discepol@tin.it> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 20:51:12 +0100
If it can be you useful I point out you a breve (it doesn't complete) bibliography on the matter treated in our letters.
Henri Le Corre, Régimes Horaires pour le monde entier, Éditions Traditionnelles - Paris 2 books, 1993
Gabriel, Traité de l'heure dans le monde, Guy Trédaniel éditeur, Paris, 1991
Françoise Gauquelin, Problèmes de l'heure résolus en astrologie, Guy trédaniel, Paris 1987
Thanks; I'll add a comment about these.
As you can read from the attached file, according to Le Corre, and according to also other authors, in France, in 1943, there was a double daylight saving time, both in the busy zones and in the zones freed by the Germans.
Le Corre is not consistent about whether he means local time or Universal Time. I think most of his data use Universal Time, but his first line "Du 15/03/1891, 0h01 au 11/03/1911, 0h01 = GMT + 0h09m21s" must be referring to local time; it wouldn't make sense as Universal Time. Three years ago Denis Excoffier checked our tables against the Ephemerides Astronomiques for 1998 from Bureau des Longitudes. I recall that an advantage of that source is that it explicitly gives the Universal Time for each transition. Unfortunately it is not available on the web as far as I know. I don't recall what it had to say about Paris during the war, either, unfortunately. Assuming Le Colle means Universal Time for most times, I see the following discrepancies between your attached page and our current tables: * Shanks has the 1911 switch at 1911-03-11 00:00; Le Corre has it at 00:01. Let's go with Le Corre here, since he has more detail. * The transitions between 1976 and 1978 are a hodgepodge. I think our tables agree with Le Corre only if we assume some of Le Corre's times are local time, and some are UTC; but this doesn't really make sense. I'd rather get some confirming data. * Shanks writes that Paris observed German time under occupation, whereas Le Corre has it observing the same as Vichy time starting on 1942-11-02. This is the discrepancy that you observe. I am inclined to agree with Le Corre. * Shanks writes that Paris reverted to the previous French rules between 1944-08-25 and 1945-09-16, whereas Le Corre has Paris continuing to observe the same time as occupied France. Here Shanks's story seems more plausible, though of course Le Corre could be right as well. I wish I had confirmation of Le Corre's data, or knew where he got his information from. Are there references in his book for this data?