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From: dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Spring Ahead, Fall Behind
Message-ID: <14430@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 6 Nov 90 16:49:29 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 796, Message 2 of 11


In volume 10, issue 793, Philip Gladstone wrote:

| A point to note is that the leap second which is inserted (or removed)
| is the last second before 00:00:00 *GMT*.

Leap seconds are never removed.  The whole reason that we have leap
seconds is that the second was redefined in the late 1960's by some
physical or atomic standard (just as the meter was redefined around
the same time and the inch followed); there was a choice between a
definition that was slightly too short for 1/86,400 of an average
solar day and having to add leap seconds occasionally and one that was
slightly too long with a result of needing to skip leap seconds
occasionally.  The selection was the former for the very reason that
holding a clock still to add a leap second was considered less
difficult (or less confusing) than speeding one up to skip a leap
second.  Surely some of the readers can name organizations, dates, and
people involved in that decision.

| I've always wondered how the change is handled as it occurrs in the middle
| of the evening for US people, which is a time when it might get noticed. 
| Over here, the winter change happens during New Year's celebrations and
| nobody is sober enough to care!

Nobody?  Maybe no one of Mr. Gladstone's acquaintance, but nobody?
Anyhow, yes, in North America the leap seconds are added in the late
afternoon or early evening, but most people aren't affected by a
single second one way or the other, so people who are interested in
timekeeping notice it and those who are not do not; imbibing has
nothing to do with it.  How did the UK cope with the leap second added
on June 30, 1972, when fewer people were inebriated?  [Perhaps Mr.
Gladstone's crowd got drunk then too; a leap second is reason enough
just on its own for a blowout.  You have to spend that extra second
doing *something*.]


David Tamkin  Box 7002  Des Plaines IL  60018-7002  708 518 6769  312 693 0591
MCI Mail: 426-1818  GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN  CIS: 73720,1570   dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com