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From: chuckb@fluke.UUCP (Chuck Bowden)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: Coordinated Universal Time
Message-ID: <840@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Oct-86 15:36:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: tpvax.840
Posted: Thu Oct 16 15:36:29 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Oct-86 06:06:48 EDT
References: <5940@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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> >> Universal time is actually just another name for Greenwich mean time.
> > 
> >It's worse than that.  A while back I called WWV here in town, and was
> >told that (as far as the fellow I talked with knew), the proper name, as
> >is used by WWV, is "coordinated universal time".  This should be
> >abbreviated CUT, but I've seen it as UCT instead.
> > 
> UCT are the initials in French.
> 
> It was my understanding that UT was actually slightly different from GMT
> in that UT explicitly includes all the corrections (leap second, etc) that are
> broadcast on WWV, while GMT is not defined so precisely.  (Note that I don't
> mean to imply that WWV defines UT...I always imagined that it was defined
> by the same folks who are the keepers of the standard meter in Paris.)
> 
> Burns

One small point: The initials for Coordinated Universal Time are UTC, not
UCT. The part about the initials being in French is correct, but the order
is UTC. (You see "UTC" used all the time on shortwave radio contact QSL
cards from all over the world; probably because French is considered the
international language of diplomacy.)

Chuck Bowden, KD7LZ