What time is it in London

From the dawn of man, people have measured time according to the position of the sun in the night sky. Noon or 12pm is when the sun is at the highest point in the sky and towns and villages would use sun dials in order to grasp the notion of measured time. Although these were surprisingly reliable there were many inconstancies between towns and cities and this resulted in each settlement being on a slightly different time.

Great Britain was the first country in the world to set up a standard time throughout a region, establishing Greenwich Mean Time or GMT in 1840 and with the help of the railway by 1847 most stations clocks were set to GMT. By 1855 most of the general public had their days set to the GMT standard but it wasn’t until 1880 that it became law. The power of the British Empire and in particular its naval superiority meant that when designating longitude and latitude, the Royal Greenwich Observatory just outside London was used and thus when the concept of time zones was introduced the different time zones was calculated using Greenwich as the starting point.

• Wellington has Latitude: 41°19'S Longitude: 174°46'E
• London has Latitude: 51°36'N Longitude: 00°05'W
• Washington has Latitude: 39°91’N Longitude: 77°02'W

So if it was 12pm on a Friday afternoon in London it would be 12am Saturday morning in Wellington with a +12:00hr difference and it would be 5am Friday morning in New York, it is plus -1hr if in London is in British Summer Time. The International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C. on November 1, 1884, with delegates from 25 countries enabled for the GMT model to become global. It established time zones with a one hour difference between adjacent time zones. The zones referenced mean solar time to the 24 standard meridians, based 15 degrees east and west of Greenwich, the point from which reckoning for each day should begin.

Britain was also the first nation to adopt day light saving scheme in 1908 and was nationally introduced in 1916 and although dates have since varied on when it was to be used it, The Summer Time Act 1972 defined the period of British Summer Time to start at 2 am (GMT) on the morning of the day after the third Saturday in March or, if that was Easter Day, the day after the second Saturday thus time would be changed to BST. It was to end at 2 am (GMT) on the day after the fourth Saturday in October where it would revert back to GMT.

So to recap, BST is +1 so in theory you have one hour less sleep on the day that clocks go forward and GMT is +0 so when the clocks go back one hour you gain that lost hour of sleep! Although this may sound very confusing it’s very straight forward and all that is required of you is to put all your clocks/ watches forward in March and back in October.