Clarification on LMT entries
Quick question. The entry for Europe/Kiev has two solar mean time entries: Zone Europe/Kiev 2:02:04 - LMT 1880 2:02:04 - KMT 1924 May 2 # Kiev Mean Time While I know how to read this, I'm not sure why the abbreviation KMT exists. Is this another invented abbreviation, or is there a source? Also, why 1880 on the LMT line? What is special about 1880? Thanks, Matt
Most likely, 1880 was the year that Ukraine adopted its capital's local time as the nationwide standard. It makes no difference in this zone, but if zones split from it, the new zone would have a transition (from the key city's LMT to that of Київ) in 1880. Call it future-proofing. Envoyé de mon iPad
Le 8 juin 2018 à 14:00, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> a écrit :
Quick question. The entry for Europe/Kiev has two solar mean time entries:
Zone Europe/Kiev 2:02:04 - LMT 1880 2:02:04 - KMT 1924 May 2 # Kiev Mean Time
While I know how to read this, I'm not sure why the abbreviation KMT exists. Is this another invented abbreviation, or is there a source?
Also, why 1880 on the LMT line? What is special about 1880?
Thanks, Matt
As I recall, tzdb's circa-1880 transitions in the former Russian empire are from Shanks. I have not found independent verification of these transitions, and quite possibly they're imaginary. For what it's worth, the guess recorded in tzdb lists a transition from local mean time to timekeeping based on clocks of major cities nearby, and this guess uses KMT to denote "Kiev Mean Time", as noted in the tzdb comment and listed in <https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html#abbreviations>. Of course we'd like a better source than Shanks for this. Common practice in 19th-century Russia was to keep Moscow time in train stations, regardless of local timekeeping practice. So that is another complexity for Kiev. Another point: these guesses are proleptic, as they use the Gregorian calendar and 19-century Russia was firmly in the Julian camp.
On 08/06/18 19:00, Matt Johnson wrote:
Quick question. The entry for Europe/Kiev has two solar mean time entries:
Zone Europe/Kiev 2:02:04 - LMT 1880 2:02:04 - KMT 1924 May 2 # Kiev Mean Time
While I know how to read this, I'm not sure why the abbreviation KMT exists. Is this another invented abbreviation, or is there a source?
Also, why 1880 on the LMT line? What is special about 1880?
At the end of the 1800's countries started standardising time across the country, but switching to 'timezones' with hour offset did not happen until later. So in the case it reads as 1880 at least an area of Ukraine switched to an offset of '2:02:04' while Zaporozhye standardised on '2:20:40' and so on, then in 1924 the whole country standardised on a 2 hour offset. What is missing from the comments in the Europe file is any corroborating evidence so the source of the actual dates is missing and it would be nice to see some Ukrainian input to fill in the gaps ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
participants (4)
-
J Andrew Lipscomb -
Lester Caine -
Matt Johnson -
Paul Eggert