BelleSerene
Active member
French time: \"heure légale\"
Many a moon ago, the Brits and the French were vying for control of the high seas. Both powers wanted to map longitude by reference to their own central points: the Brits at the Greenwich observatory; the French in Paris.
One side came out on top. One nil to the Brits.
Centuries later, resplendent diplomats to the last, the French managed to influence the internationalisation of Greenwich Mean Time to Coordinated Universal Time. Just as they pulled off something of a coup at Versailles, got a permanent seat on the UN security council (being formed from the victors (think about it) of WW II) and got to run the announcements at that famous French festival, the Olympic Games, they wanted universal time to be called TUC (temps universel coordonné). The justification for their claim to naming the acknowledged global standard, over all the other nations that also hadn't created it, escapes history. So we reached a compromise. Step forward, UTC. Er - that's Universal Time, Coordinated or universel temps coordonné. You're right: nonsense in either language, but it accommodated the French. One all.
Now when you go over to France and read their tide tables, you'll find they are written in "heure légale". What this means is GMT (or UTC, if you will) plus one hour. It's what the French use for winter time, and they add an hour in the summer on the same dates we flip to BST.
But try to get an honest explanation of this from a French website. Trying to unravel "heure légale" last night I came across the following:
Selon la loi du 9 mars 1911 en vigueur jusqu'en 1978, l'heure légale en France était l'heure du temps moyen de Paris retardée de 9 minutes 21 secondes. Cette définition voulait signifier en fait que l'heure légale en France était le temps universel
Translated, this means:
According to the law of 9 March 1911 until 1978, the time in France was the time of Paris Mean Time delayed 9 minutes 21 seconds. This definition would mean that time in France was Universal Time.
So the French were still defining UT in terms of their Paris meridian minus an arbitrary offset. Any similarity between the result of this calculation and the Greenwich meridian standardised by their long adversaries is of course entirely coincidental.
Perhaps when people turn to re-writing history, keeping score no longer matters!
Many a moon ago, the Brits and the French were vying for control of the high seas. Both powers wanted to map longitude by reference to their own central points: the Brits at the Greenwich observatory; the French in Paris.
One side came out on top. One nil to the Brits.
Centuries later, resplendent diplomats to the last, the French managed to influence the internationalisation of Greenwich Mean Time to Coordinated Universal Time. Just as they pulled off something of a coup at Versailles, got a permanent seat on the UN security council (being formed from the victors (think about it) of WW II) and got to run the announcements at that famous French festival, the Olympic Games, they wanted universal time to be called TUC (temps universel coordonné). The justification for their claim to naming the acknowledged global standard, over all the other nations that also hadn't created it, escapes history. So we reached a compromise. Step forward, UTC. Er - that's Universal Time, Coordinated or universel temps coordonné. You're right: nonsense in either language, but it accommodated the French. One all.
Now when you go over to France and read their tide tables, you'll find they are written in "heure légale". What this means is GMT (or UTC, if you will) plus one hour. It's what the French use for winter time, and they add an hour in the summer on the same dates we flip to BST.
But try to get an honest explanation of this from a French website. Trying to unravel "heure légale" last night I came across the following:
Selon la loi du 9 mars 1911 en vigueur jusqu'en 1978, l'heure légale en France était l'heure du temps moyen de Paris retardée de 9 minutes 21 secondes. Cette définition voulait signifier en fait que l'heure légale en France était le temps universel
Translated, this means:
According to the law of 9 March 1911 until 1978, the time in France was the time of Paris Mean Time delayed 9 minutes 21 seconds. This definition would mean that time in France was Universal Time.
So the French were still defining UT in terms of their Paris meridian minus an arbitrary offset. Any similarity between the result of this calculation and the Greenwich meridian standardised by their long adversaries is of course entirely coincidental.
Perhaps when people turn to re-writing history, keeping score no longer matters!