It is time to realign ourselves with the earth. Tonight our clocks will go back one hour to Greenwich Meantime.
It was a long time ago that a chap wandering up the hill from the River Thames noticed he was following a straight line etched in the ground; being a clever chap, a member of The Royal Society, he realised he had discovered the Prime Meridian Line. Longitude Zero (0° 0′ 0″). He set up some crowd funding and the Royal Observatory was built on the spot so no one would lose the Prime Meridian Line.
Every place on Earth is measured in terms of its angle east or west from this line. Since 1884, the Prime Meridian has served as the reference point for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
British Summer Time was invented a century ago so cricket matches and Wimbledon could enjoy long summer evenings. Henceforth people have had two weekends a year to be totally confused; Spring Forward they might grasp, but Fall Backwards is harder as we call this season autumn… Even if we know which way to move the hand on our antique analogue clock we still can’t remember if we’re having an extra hour in bed or losing an hour’s sleep.
None of this affects the tilt of the earth’s axis.
The actual time of the change is 2am on Sunday. You will either have to stay up late to change your clocks and watches, or if you have an atomic clock it will automatically change, so too will your computers and phones, this is done by magic.
If you can’t work out if the clock stops at 2am, then goes back to 1am, or stays at 2.00 for an hour, or goes to 3am then leaps back an hour, why don’t you stay awake and observe and tell the rest of us the answer tomorrow.
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 
Using the American language it is easy to remember which way the clocks go: spring forward, fall back. I always thought that the changes began during WW1, silly me 😊
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It never occurrred to me to wonder how the magic happens on computers and automated clocks. Intrigued though I am, I don’t think I’ll stay up to find out 🙂
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It’s usually the one time I am not awake in the middle of the night so I miss it.
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It means that I ll be party an hour longer tonight. 🙂
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Thank goodness we don’t have daylight saving in Western Australia, though we do have to cope with the changes that Daylight saving in other states bring to us – the main nuisance being that Sydney and Melbourne are then 3 hours ahead of us instead of two, very annoying when you get back from lunch late and discover it is now too late to ring head office in Sydney! Of course, it’s easy to understand the time zones during summer, there are a mere 6 of them, and it’s not difficult to remember that Eucla and Broken Hill have time zones different to the state they are in, and that Norfolk, Christmas and Cocos islands each have their own time zones, bringing the total to 9 for Australia and it’s protectorates. As for Lord Howe Island, do we really need to know what they mean by saying that LHST (Lord Howe Standard Time) is not observed in Australia at present, though it will be once more when Daylight saving ends? We relate our time zones to Greenwich Mean Time, but officially it should be in relation to UTC (Co-ordinated Universal Time) which appear to be exactly the same but different, in that GMT is a Time Zone, and UTC is a Time Standard, which means no country uses UTC as local time.
I don’t know what the fuss is all about!
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We were touring Australia and booked a trip to Fraser Island from our camp site. We got up very early and waited at the gate, but nothing came. We waited over an hour then the coach arrived. We hadn’t realised there was a time change. The trip was amazing [but exhausting!]
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Thanks Jean for enlightening us; sounds like Australia may hold the record for the number of time zones unless Russia can beat that.
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I really enjoyed this post, Janet. I am dejected about the clocks going back though, all my meetings will be really late now SIGH!
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Tjhanks Robbie, how many hours ahead are you?
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It was one but now moves to two so my conference calls move to 6pm at night here.
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Here in British Columbia we are hoping to do away with the time change and stay on so-called Daylight Saving Time year round. Three western US states are also hoping to do that, but apparently need permission from the federal government, which may not be forthcoming. Studies have shown (ha!) that there are more traffic accidents when clocks go forward or back, not to mention confusion and grumpiness.
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Yes Audrey I gather you also have to fit in with your US neighours – Time is more complicated than I thought.
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If only we could get in line with Europe!! But I suppose that’s less likely than ever now….
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Yes, alas, but at least we have just one time zone, unlike lots of countries.
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Nice view of clocks! We still have a couple more weeks to go here in the US to fall backward. Like another commenter said, we voted for something in a recent election but it may never see the light of day
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Thanks Terri, yes it’s even more confusing when you have to Facetime overseas and clocks change on different weekends.
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it is a strange concept, especially given the fact that not everyone does it…
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Hello Jim, yes it is, because it doesn’t actually alter the number of daylight hours!
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that’s true, I never thought of it that way…
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Ours is happening next weekend … so not looking forward to it. 😦
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