Scott G. Hall wrote:
Actually, I was told that the designation was a compromise between several European nations. It was decided that the common time reference would still be Greenwich, England (instead of some other city on the same longitude), but the compromise was that its name would be French (the French for "Universal Time Coordinated" -- I don't speak French) -- thus UTC.
That is certainly wrong. The French always put the adjective BEHIND the noun, so the French version would be either something like Temps Universel Coordine (TUC) or Temps Coordine Universel (TCU). (no guarantee for the spelling) The explanation of UTC is quite easy: UT is the abbreviation for the English term Universal Time, and you can append an index 0, 1, 2, or C to this abbreviation in order to indicate which exact flavor of Universal Time you are refering to. Therefore, UTC is not strictly an abbreviation at all, but you can read it as "Universal Time, coordinated" just as UT1 can be read as "Universal Time, version #1". Markus -- Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student -- University of Erlangen, Internet Mail: <mskuhn@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> - Germany WWW Home: <http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/user/mskuhn>