Our society has created a fictional time system of 32 time zones (24 one-hour offsets and several more half-hour and three-quarter hour offsets). --Tognazzini, Bruce (tog@eng.sun.com): "Tog on Interface: The Myth of Precision", Sun World, volume 6, number 7 (June, 1993), page 100. A grep in /usr/lib/zoneinfo/* on a SunOS 4.1.1 system failed to show up eight oddball time zones (see attached). Does anyone know of the origin for the "32" time zones? --ado
In message <9306081338.AA10015@bossie.nci.nih.gov> you write:
Our society has created a fictional time system of 32 time zones (24 one-hour offsets and several more half-hour and three-quarter hour offsets).
--Tognazzini, Bruce (tog@eng.sun.com): "Tog on Interface: The Myth of Precision", Sun World, volume 6, number 7 (June, 1993), page 100.
A grep in /usr/lib/zoneinfo/* on a SunOS 4.1.1 system failed to show up eight oddball time zones (see attached). Does anyone know of the origin for the "32" time zones?
--ado
Among my accumulation of time zone abbreviations I find: GMT + ACDT 10:30 Australian Central Daylight ACST 9:30 Australian Central Standard CADT 10:30 Central Australian Daylight CAST 9:30 Central Australian Standard CST 9:30 North/South Australian Central Standard HDT -9:30 Hawaiian Daylight (until 1947) HST -10:00 Hawaiian Standard (-10:30 until 1947) IDT 4:30 Iran Daylight IST 3:30 Iran Standard IST 5:30 Indian Standard IT 3:30 Iran JT 7:30 Java MT 8:30 Moluccas (obsolete) NDT -2:30 Newfoundland Daylight NFT -3:30 Newfoundland NST 8:30 North Sumatran (obsolete) NST -3:30 Newfoundland Standard SADT 10:30 South Australian Daylight SAST 9:30 South Australian Standard I think there are at least 8 separate half-hour zones there, if that's what you mean by oddball time zones. I don't know about any zones with three-quarter hour offsets, but would like to know what they are. Vic Abell
I don't know where tog's magic number of 32 time zones came from, but it's clearly too small. My best guess at the true current number is 35. Here's how I derived it. There are 25 time zones that are an integral number of hours offset from GMT, ranging from GMT -1200 (Kwajalein) to GMT +1200 (New Zealand). All are in use somewhere (but see comments on Kwajalein below). Here are the 12 other zones described in Olson's usno1989 file; see SunOS 4.x's /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/usno1989 (why did they remove this info from SunOS 5?): -0930 Marquesas Is; Cook Is; French Polynesia -0330 Newfoundland; -0130 Newfoundland Daylight +0330 Iran +0430 Afghanistan +0530 India; Sri Lanka +0545 Nepal +0630 Myanmar (Burma); Cocos I +0930 South Australia; +1030 South Australia Summer +1130 Norfolk I +1245 Chatham Is That's 10 non-integral zones, so the total number is 25 + 10 = 35. I'm not counting the Arabian peninsula, which (rumor has it) uses solar time, not time zones. Nor am I counting daylight savings time as a separate zone. And no doubt there are some errors in usno1989, so this number is not definitive. abe listed a bunch of time zones like ``Java Time'' that are no longer in use, at least according to usno1989. I think those zones date back to colonial times. Also, usno1989's info for the ex-Soviet Union is woefully out of date due to the March 1991 time zone reforms in the (then-) SU. E.g. I think Uelen is now +1200 (+1300 summer), not +1300 (+1400 summer). Kwajalein is a special case -- it's west of the International Date Line but usno1989 says it's 12 hours behind GMT! Perhaps it's a typo in usno1989, and should be +1200? Or perhaps they prefer being closer to US/Pacific time since they're the target of ICBMs from Vandenberg.
In message <9306081938.AA22755@bi.twinsun.com> you write:
abe listed a bunch of time zones like ``Java Time'' that are no longer in use, at least according to usno1989. I think those zones date back to colonial times. Also, usno1989's info for the ex-Soviet Union is woefully out of date due to the March 1991 time zone reforms in the (then-) SU. E.g. I think Uelen is now +1200 (+1300 summer), not +1300 (+1400 summer).
As Paul knows, since he and I have corresponded about it, my list is constructed from all the abbreviations I have seen used in electronic mail headers or described in some official list, however old it may be. Vic
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ado -
eggert@twinsun.com