Re: [tz] 1 s error in America/Adak and America/Nome
On 06/10/2017 07:42 AM, Michael H Deckers wrote:
I do not understand the evidence for the proposed changes. A change of time scale by 24 h is only observable though the day of the week and the day number in a calendar (which may be combined with a switch of calendars), but not through the time of day.
Where two successive days are observed as Sundays, this is evidence for the change of time scale having occurred at the instant between the two.
Yes. However, the the question is whether America/Sitka should record the time kept by those in formal control of Sitka, or the time kept by Toomas Ahllund and his fellow workers who made the transition on Sunday in order to have a longer weekend. If the former, the transition should be at 15:30 Friday (Gregorian); if the latter, it should presumably be at 00:00 Sunday (Gregorian). I chose the former, partly because it reflects formal transfer of control, and partly because we have a specific time-of-day recorded for it.
And if a precise instant for the acquisition of Alaska is to be taken as the instant of the time zone change, then this assumption should be applied to all locations (where nothing else is known). But the proposed changes to tzdb amount to the change happening when UT = 1867-10-19 + 00:41:37 h for Yakutat UT = 1867-10-19 + 00:31:13 h for Sitka, Juneau, Metlakatla UT = 1867-10-19 + 00:31:03 h for Adak, Nome UT = 1867-10-19 + 00:30:59 h for Anchorage I do not see support for such variations.
Thanks for reporting that; those were due to bugs in my calculations. I installed the attached patch to fix the bugs, and to try to clarify the point you mentioned.
On 2017-06-10 21:15, Paul Eggert wrote:
.... However, the the question is whether America/Sitka should record the time kept by those in formal control of Sitka, or the time kept by Toomas Ahllund and his fellow workers who made the transition on Sunday in order to have a longer weekend. If the former, the transition should be at 15:30 Friday (Gregorian); if the latter, it should presumably be at 00:00 Sunday (Gregorian). I chose the former, partly because it reflects formal transfer of control, and partly because we have a specific time-of-day recorded for it.
I agree that we need an estimate for the precise instant of the jump by 24 h in the Alaskan time scales near 1867-10-18, as long as we do not have evidence, such as from port diaries. What worries me a bit are the underlying assumptions of the new estimate: • an odd time (1867-10-19T00:31:13Z) of a local event in Sitka is certainly not the effective time of an international treaty like the Alaska purchase; • assumptions that the day of the week was set back from Saturday to Friday at 15:30 or at 15:33:32 local time are unlikely to be true -- such things are done over night; • the assumption that various remote places in Alaska in 1867, not connected by telegraphy lines, would have spent any effort to synchronize some of their actions seems unlikely to me. They had no reason to do it, and they would have needed several days on sea to even agree on the event to be synchronized. That is why I prefer the previous estimate: do the switch at some local midnight close to the date of the purchase. To make this post a bit more productive, here are the implications of what the 2001 "Alaska History" [AH] page by Frank Norris says about Juneau before 1969: Zone America/Juneau 15:02:19 - LMT 1867 Oct 19 15:33:32 -8:57:41 - LMT 1900 Aug 20 12:00 # [AH] "The implementation of a telegraph system, in practical terms, # demanded the establishment of one or more time zones, and # given the concentration of economic and political power at # the time in Alaska’s southeastern panhandle, it was unsurprising # that “Alaska Standard Time,” established in 1900, would be # centered on the 135th meridian, just one hour before Pacific # Standard Time.(6) # (6) Annual Report of the Governor of Alaska, 1901, 73." - -8:00 - PST 1942 + -9:00 - YST 1933 May 24 # [AH] "In May 1933, Seattle launched a new daylight saving time experiment. # In reaction, Juneau city council member J. B. Burford presented a # daylight saving time petition “signed by many business people.” # ..[T]he council unanimously adopted Burford’s plan, and Juneau # went on daylight saving time from May 24 through September 20.(11) # (11) Daily Alaska Empire, May 6, 19-20, and 24, 1933 and September 20, 1933." + -9:00 1:00 YDT 1933 Sep 24 + -9:00 - YST 1940 Apr 30 23:00 # [AH] "On April 2, 1940, voters in the Juneau-Douglas area adopted the # time-change move on a 753-564 vote, and at 11 p.m. on April 30, # area clocks shifted an hour ahead. Other Southeast communities # apparently followed suit, and by the eve of World War II nearly # all of Southeast, except Skagway and Yakutat, had adopted Pacific Time.(13) # 13. Daily Alaska Empire, May 20, June 6, and July 6-8 and 22, 1939, and April 3 and 30, 1940." + -8:00 - PST 1942 Feb 09 02:00 # [AH] "On February 9, 1942, Alaska, along with the other states and # territories, went on daylight saving time or “war time” on a # year-round basis. Because many southeastern communities had moved to # Pacific Time in 1940, adopting federally mandated war time in those # communities brought no changes to local clocks." - -8:00 US P%sT 1946 + -9:00 1:00 YWT 1945 Aug 14 23:00u + -9:00 1:00 YPT 1945 Sep 30 02:00 -8:00 - PST 1969 Michael Deckers.
On 12 June 2017 at 11:23, Michael H Deckers via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
• an odd time (1867-10-19T00:31:13Z) of a local event in Sitka is certainly not the effective time of an international treaty like the Alaska purchase;
Why not? That wasn't an "odd time" in Sitka; it was 15:30. The modern notions of UTC and, moreover, standardized time zones would not have been a contributing factor at the time. And while it may not have been an exact time spelled out in the treaty (and, indeed, it does not appear such a time was even specified <https://books.google.com/books?id=AywBjGzUxKgC&lpg=RA2-PA671&ots=qBt4ldOetr&...>), it certainly represents a distinct transfer of power, which could reasonably be said to be when the treaty actually came into "effect". Thanks for your work on this, Paul. I'd put a little effort into a similar patch after the discussion on Asia/Manila in March <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2017-March/024895.html>, but life got in the way of its completion. I suspect you were piqued by the same sources as I was on this matter. :) -- Tim Parenti
On 2017-06-12 15:47, Tim Parenti wrote:
Thanks for your work on this, Paul. I'd put a little effort into a similar patch after the discussion on Asia/Manila in March <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2017-March/024895.html>, but life got in the way of its completion. I suspect you were piqued by the same sources as I was on this matter. :)
An even more similar case (a jump back by 1 d) occurs for Pacific/Apia. tzdb has it in 1879 as two successive Fridays, [http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/idl/idl.htm] has it in 1892 (two successive Mondays). Now Alaska has two successive Friday afternoons - Saturday mornings. - , be opw --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
On 06/13/2017 04:06 AM, Michael Deckers wrote:
An even more similar case (a jump back by 1 d) occurs for Pacific/Apia. tzdb has it in 1879 as two successive Fridays, [http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/idl/idl.htm] has it in 1892 (two successive Mondays).
Ouch, clearly tzdb is wrong here. I misread Howse: his "1879" talks about the British governor of Fiji's standardization, not about the King of Samoa's later flattery of the U.S. Thanks for pointing this out. I installed the attached.
Michael H Deckers wrote:
• an odd time (1867-10-19T00:31:13Z) of a local event in Sitka is certainly not the effective time of an international treaty like the Alaska purchase;
We have a letter documenting 15:30 local time, written by General Lovell Rousseau, the American commissioner in charge of the formal transfer of control. He uses the word "precisely" for the ceremony's starting time, presumably to document the point of transition. The treaty itself (and I've read its English version) does not specify a transition date or time, presumably because the Russians wanted to be sure they'd be paid before ceding control.
• assumptions that the day of the week was set back from Saturday to Friday at 15:30 or at 15:33:32 local time
I don't think that's how things happened. Rousseau documents his expedition purely from an American timekeeping point of view, and I have little doubt that the Americans in Sitka kept American time throughout. So in practice, Sitka had overlapping time zones (much like Ürümqi today) for at least a day or two. We don't want to create a new time zone entry just for this problem: we need a single point of transition. The best single point I can think of is the 15:30 time of the Ossipee's salute.
• the assumption that various remote places in Alaska in 1867, not connected by telegraphy lines
You're right, of course that's ridiculous. Of the tzdb Alaska locations only Sitka was inhabited, so none of the other locations even matter from our point of view. If we knew when the other locations became inhabited, I suppose we could use the -00 convention for them at the proper point. However, if we did that, we'd lose relevant information in the database that presumably does reflect a common attitude of passers-through before and after 1867, and this is why I kept the (mostly notional) transitions for the other Alaska locations.
On 2017-06-12 16:17, Paul Eggert wrote:
Michael H Deckers wrote:
• assumptions that the day of the week was set back from Saturday to Friday at 15:30 or at 15:33:32 local time
I don't think that's how things happened. Rousseau documents his expedition purely from an American timekeeping point of view, and I have little doubt that the Americans in Sitka kept American time throughout. So in practice, Sitka had overlapping time zones (much like Ürümqi today) for at least a day or two. We don't want to create a new time zone entry just for this problem: we need a single point of transition. The best single point I can think of is the 15:30 time of the Ossipee's salute.
Nobody can argue with that (;-)). The proposed change would make civil time at Sitka switch from Saturday, 1867-10-19 15:30 to Friday, 1867-10-18 15:30. If that is not how things have happened then the proposal should, in my humble opinion, be changed to something that could have happened, even if it becomes less interesting culturally. Is "kept American time" supposed to imply that Americans in Sitka did not use the same days of the week as the Russians? That would be hard to believe and certainly would need some evidence. What we do have evidence for is that the Russian Church in Alaska tried to keep the old time scale for liturgical purposes. See eg Ian R Bartky: "One Time Fits All: The Campaigns for Global Uniformity". 2007. partly on line at [https://books.google.de/books/about /One_Time_Fits_All.html?id=rC6sAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y] page 26. But of course, that happened after the switch in question, not before it, and it does not concern civil time, the subject of tzdb. Michael Deckers. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
On 2017-06-14 01:17, Michael Deckers via tz wrote:
On 2017-06-12 16:17, Paul Eggert wrote:
• assumptions that the day of the week was set back from Saturday to Friday at 15:30 or at 15:33:32 local time The proposed change would make civil time at Sitka switch from Saturday, 1867-10-19 15:30 to Friday, 1867-10-18 15:30. If that is not how things have happened then the proposal should, in my humble opinion, be changed to something that could have happened, even if it becomes less interesting culturally. Is "kept American time" supposed to imply that Americans in Sitka did not use the same days of the week as the Russians? That would be hard to believe and certainly would need some evidence.
The International Date Line runs between Siberia and Alaska so the day changed because of the time zone change from + to -. The calendar also changed in Alaska, as Russia still used the Julian calendar, until 1918. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
On 14 June 2017 at 03:17, Michael Deckers via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
Is "kept American time" supposed to imply that Americans in Sitka did not use the same days of the week as the Russians? That would be hard to believe and certainly would need some evidence.
It's not hard to believe at all. By that point, the discrepancies between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the concept of the International Date Line were fairly well-known amongst those who needed to be so concerned, even if the latter was still fairly ill-defined at the time. It's reasonable that those in Sitka needed to be somewhat more aware of these concerns than was otherwise typical, and that those who actively needed to deal with two separate systems simply went about doing so. Given the communications of the era, this probably actually affected very few people; however, where Russians and Americans may have been co-mingled, a higher proportion would likely at least be aware of the existence of two systems. The modern-day comparisons with how people communicate amongst themselves in areas near time zone boundaries and ambiguous areas are plentiful. This one's just a question of figuring the correct local date for any given purpose, instead of the correct local time. "Any given purpose" is key here. The syntactic answers can vary depending on who you ask and why; the important thing is coordination by means of semantic agreement. And that's a much broader and older concept that tz can't really aim to cover fully. -- Tim Parenti
On 06/14/2017 12:17 AM, Michael Deckers wrote:
Is "kept American time" supposed to imply that Americans in Sitka did not use the same days of the week as the Russians?
Yes, that's what I think happened, at least for the Americans who sailed north to take over Alaska. The Americans who officially took charge that Friday (American time) were extremely unlikely to use Russian time, if only to remind themselves and everybody else that the US was in charge. These Americans arrived at Sitka late in the morning and officially took over in the afternoon, and it's not likely that they changed their calendars just for the four hours or so that Russia was still officially in control, or for the 37 hours or so before Sitka workers started celebrating their duplicate Sunday. I found a more-detailed account of the formal transfer from a reporter for the New York Herald, and it looks like I messed up what that 15:30 was about. The USS Ossipee and USS Resaca didn't salute until a few minutes after 15:30 (we don't know exactly when); it was the Russians who saluted at "precisely" 15:30. I installed the attached commentary patch to try to fix this.
On 2017-06-14 19:44, Paul Eggert wrote:
+# presumably to get two Sundays off that week. See: Ahllund T (tr Hallamaa P). which could perhaps be misinterpreted as if it was the choice of Sitka workers. From [Ian R Bartky: "One Time Fits All: The Campaigns for Global Uniformity". Stanford University Press. 2007. p 24..26] about the time after 1867-10-18:
"..in Alaska two Sabbaths continued to be observed every week. According to George Davidson, a contemporary field geodesist and astronomer who investigated the matter, "[T]he Holy Orthodox Church in Alaska did not change until January 1st 1871 by order of Right Reverend John [Ioann Mitropol'skii], Bishop of Alaska & the Aleutian Islands." " Michael Deckers.
On 06/15/2017 12:21 AM, Michael H Deckers wrote:
On 2017-06-14 19:44, Paul Eggert wrote:
+# presumably to get two Sundays off that week.... which could perhaps be misinterpreted as if it was the choice of Sitka workers.
Fair enough, I installed the attached. Ahllund writes of work in Sitka: "... one cannot claim that there was an excess of work, because there were so many days off every once in a while." For overtime pay, workers received 1/5 of a bottle of spirits per hour. For what it's worth, Ahllund did not like the American takeover. He writes, "lots of people belonging to the scum of the society had arrived together with the new colonists, and they were walking around unemployed, with revolver pistols in their pockets. If there was any argument between them and other people, or if they knew that someone had some money on them, one two, three, they went - and bang!" Although he had intended to stay in Sitka after the American takeover because the pay was good, the violence soon convinced him to depart via Russian frigate.
participants (5)
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Brian Inglis -
Michael Deckers -
Michael H Deckers
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Paul Eggert -
Tim Parenti