page_title: Greenwich Mean Time
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Greenwich Mean Time / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Uhr am königlichen Observatorium in Greenwich, England. English: Shepherd gate clock at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, UK. At 14:05:42 (02:05:42 pm) Français&#160;: Horloge de l'Observatoire royal de Greenwich, au Royaume-Uni. 中文: 英国格林尼治皇家天文台的时钟 Camera: Nikon D80 with AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm Exposure: F/5, 1/15s, ISO 200
context_page_description: Greenwich Mean Time is the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, reckoned from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a consequence, it cannot be used to specify a precise time unless a context is given.
  English speakers often use GMT as a synonym for Coordinated Universal Time. For navigation, it is considered equivalent to UT1; but this meaning can differ from UTC by up to 0.9 s. The term GMT should not thus be used for certain technical purposes requiring precision.
  Because of Earth's uneven angular velocity in its elliptical orbit and its axial tilt, noon GMT is rarely the exact moment the Sun crosses the Greenwich meridian and reaches its highest point in the sky there. This event may occur up to 16 minutes before or after noon GMT, a discrepancy calculated by the equation of time. Noon GMT is the annual average moment of this event, which accounts for the word "mean" in "Greenwich Mean Time".
  Originally, astronomers considered a GMT day to start at noon, while for almost everyone else it started at midnight.
context_section_description: As the United Kingdom developed into an advanced maritime nation, British mariners kept at least one chronometer on GMT to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was considered to have longitude zero degrees, by a convention adopted in the International Meridian Conference of 1884. Synchronisation of the chronometer on GMT did not affect shipboard time, which was still solar time. But this practice, combined with mariners from other nations drawing from Nevil Maskelyne's method of lunar distances based on observations at Greenwich, led to GMT being used worldwide as a standard time independent of location. Most time zones were based upon GMT, as an offset of a number of hours (and possibly half or quarter hours) "ahead of GMT" or "behind GMT".
  Greenwich Mean Time was adopted across the island of Great Britain by the Railway Clearing House in 1847 and by almost all railway companies by the following year, from which the term "railway time" is derived. It was gradually adopted for other purposes, but a legal case in 1858 held "local mean time" to be the official time. On 14 May 1880, a letter signed by "Clerk to Justices" appeared in The Times, stating that "Greenwich time is now kept almost throughout England, but it appears that Greenwich time is not legal time. For example, our polling booths were opened, say, at 8 13 and closed at 4 13 p.m." This was changed later in 1880, when Greenwich Mean Time was legally adopted throughout the island of Great Britain. GMT was adopted in the Isle of Man in 1883, in Jersey in 1898 and in Guernsey in 1913. Ireland adopted GMT in 1916, supplanting Dublin Mean Time. Hourly time signals from Greenwich Observatory were first broadcast on 5 February 1924, rendering the time ball at the observatory redundant.
  The daily rotation of the Earth is irregular (see ΔT) and has a slowing trend; therefore atomic clocks constitute a much more stable timebase. On 1 January 1972, GMT was superseded as the international civil time standard by Coordinated Universal Time, maintained by an ensemble of atomic clocks around the world. Universal Time (UT), a term introduced in 1928, initially represented mean time at Greenwich determined in the traditional way to accord with the originally defined universal day; from 1 January 1956 (as decided by the International Astronomical Union in Dublin in 1955, at the initiative of William Markowitz) this "raw" form of UT was re-labelled UT0 and effectively superseded by refined forms UT1 (UT0 equalised for the effects of polar wandering) and UT2 (UT1 further equalised for annual seasonal variations in Earth rotation rate).
   Indeed, even the Greenwich meridian itself is not quite what it used to be—defined by "the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory at Greenwich". Although that instrument still survives in working order, it is no longer in use and now the meridian of origin of the world's longitude and time is not strictly defined in material form but from a statistical solution resulting from observations of all time-determination stations which the BIPM takes into account when co-ordinating the world's time signals. Nevertheless, the line in the old observatory's courtyard today differs no more than a few metres from that imaginary line which is now the prime meridian of the world. 
  — Howse, D. (1997). Greenwich time and the longitude. London: Philip Wilson.
caption: Greenwich clock with standard measurements
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