World Clock

"Greenwich Mean Time or GMT is the clock time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. It is the same all year round and is not affected by Summer Time or Daylight Saving Time. When the sun is at its highest point exactly above the Prime Meridian, it is 1200 noon at Greenwich. With less than 24 hours before the solstice, view current Sun position and Midnight/Midday on Earth. GMT is still widely used as the standard time against which all the other time zones in the world are referenced. UK clocks abide by EU rules European clocks are now on DAYLIGHT SAVING When do clocks next change in Europe? • Daylight saving start : Sunday 26 March 2017 01:00 GMT. Clocks go forward one hour. • Daylight saving end : Sunday 29 October 2017 01:00 GMT.Clocks go back one hour. UK and Europe Clock Change Rules GMT was originally set-up to aid naval navigation when travel around the globe started to open up with the discovery of the New World (America) in the fifteenth century. Read more here about the connection between accurate time-keeping, GMT and sea voyages. GMT was not forced on to land-lubbers until the introduction of the railways (railroads) in the ah, I need mid-nineteenth century. The developing railway network meant that Britain needed a national time system to replace the local time adopted by major towns and cities. As Greenwich, due to the presence of the Royal Observatory, was the national centre for time and had been since 1675, the choice was obvious. Nevertheless, GMT was not adopted officially by Parliament until 2 August 1880 . Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was then adopted by the United States (USA) on 18 November 1883. The chosen moment was at noon, when the telegraph lines transmitted time signals to all major cities. Prior to that there were over 300 local times in the USA. On 1 November 1884, GMT was adopted universally at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, USA. As a result, the International Date Line was drawn up and 24 time zones were created. Today, GMT is used as the UK’s civil time, or UTC. GMT has been referred to as UT1, which directly corresponds to the rotation of the Earth, and is subject to that rotation’s slight irregularities. It is the difference between UT1 and UTC that is kept below 0.9s by the application of leap seconds. "