UTC−12:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of −12:00. It is the last to enter a New Year , and is sometimes referred to as the International Date Line West ( IDLW ) time zone.
110-486: UTC−12:00 is a nautical time zone comprising the high seas between 180° and 172°30′W longitude, and the time is obtained by subtracting twelve hours from UTC . No inhabited territory lie within this time zone offset, either as standard time or daylight saving time. A number of inhabited territories lie within the longitudinal limits of this time zone. These are Tonga , Wallis and Futuna and Chatham Islands as well as parts of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of Russia ,
220-468: A guard riding in the coach to uncouple it from the main train and bring it to a stop at the correct position. The first such " slip coach " was detached from the Flying Dutchman at Bridgwater in 1869. The company's first sleeping cars were operated between Paddington and Plymouth in 1877. Then on 1 October 1892 its first corridor train ran from Paddington to Birkenhead, and the following year saw
330-557: A C library based on the BSD C library, or the System V Release 4 C library, can make use of this database. Windows -based computer systems prior to Windows 95 and Windows NT used local time, but Windows 95 and later, and Windows NT, base system time on UTC. They allow a program to fetch the system time as UTC, represented as a year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and millisecond; Windows 95 and later, and Windows NT 3.5 and later, also allow
440-546: A Liverpool to London rail line under construction in the 1830s Bristol's status was threatened. The answer for Bristol was, with the co-operation of London interests, to build a line of their own; a railway built to unprecedented standards of excellence to out-perform the lines being constructed to the North West of England . The company was founded at a meeting in Bristol on 21 January 1833. Isambard Kingdom Brunel , then aged 27,
550-444: A convenient time, usually at night, not exactly when they cross a certain longitude. Some ships simply remain on the time of the departing port during the whole trip. Ideal time zones, such as nautical time zones, are based on the mean solar time of a particular meridian in the middle of that zone with boundaries located 7.5 degrees east and west of the meridian. In practice, however, many time zone boundaries are drawn much farther to
660-407: A legal entity for nearly two more years, being formally wound up on 23 December 1949. GWR designs of locomotives and rolling stock continued to be built for a while and the region maintained its own distinctive character, even painting for a while its stations and express trains in a form of chocolate and cream. About 40 years after nationalisation British Rail was privatised and the old name
770-699: A legal requirement that the GWR, along with all other British railways, had to serve each station with trains which included third-class accommodation at a fare of not more than one penny per mile and a speed of at least 12 mph (19 km/h). By 1882, third-class carriages were attached to all trains except for the fastest expresses . Another parliamentary order meant that trains began to include smoking carriages from 1868. Special " excursion " cheap-day tickets were first issued in May 1849 and season tickets in 1851. Until 1869 most revenue came from second-class passengers but
880-490: A particular time and date exists, this is referred to as Anywhere on Earth (AoE). A deadline specified as "Anywhere on Earth" has not passed if there is a place on Earth where the deadline has not passed, which is equivalent to the statement that the deadline has not passed in the UTC–12:00 zone. The IDLW is also used in software testing for time zone related code that uses system default time zone, as in some cases they may be
990-423: A single time zone even though the extent of their territory far exceeds the ideal 15° of longitude for one hour; other countries, such as Spain and Argentina , use standard hour-based offsets, but not necessarily those that would be determined by their geographical location. The consequences, in some areas, can affect the lives of local citizens, and in extreme cases contribute to larger political issues, such as in
1100-401: A system of hourly standard time zones for North American railroads, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones having north–south borders, the first centered on Washington, D.C. , but by 1872 the first was centered on meridian 75° west of Greenwich , with natural borders such as sections of
1210-627: A task completed through to Exeter on 1 March 1876 by the GWR. The station here had been shared with the LSWR since 1862. This rival company had continued to push westwards over its Exeter and Crediton line and arrived in Plymouth later in 1876, which spurred the South Devon Railway to also amalgamate with the Great Western. The Cornwall Railway remained a nominally independent line until 1889, although
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#17328687571841320-445: A worldwide system of time zones in 1876 - see Sandford Fleming § Inventor of worldwide standard time . The proposal divided the world into twenty-four time zones labeled A-Y (skipping J), each one covering 15 degrees of longitude. All clocks within each zone would be set to the same time as the others, but differed by one hour from those in the neighboring zones. He advocated his system at several international conferences, including
1430-544: Is Box Tunnel , the longest railway tunnel driven by that time. Several years later, the railway opened the even longer Severn Tunnel to carry a new line between England and Wales beneath the River Severn . Some other notable structures were added when smaller companies were amalgamated into the GWR. These include the South Devon Railway sea wall , the Cornwall Railway 's Royal Albert Bridge , and Barmouth Bridge on
1540-539: Is about 2.5 degrees to the west. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich , founded in 1675, established Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the mean solar time at that location, as an aid to mariners to determine longitude at sea, providing a standard reference time while each location in England kept a different time. In the 19th century, as transportation and telecommunications improved, it became increasingly inconvenient for each location to observe its own solar time. In November 1840,
1650-478: Is added directly after the time without a separating space. "Z" is the zone designator for the zero UTC offset. "09:30 UTC" is therefore represented as "09:30Z" or "0930Z". Likewise, "14:45:15 UTC" is written as "14:45:15Z" or "144515Z". UTC time is also known as "Zulu" time, since "Zulu" is a phonetic alphabet code word for the letter "Z". Offsets from UTC are written in the format ±hh:mm, ±hhmm, or ±hh (either hours ahead or behind UTC). For example, if
1760-487: Is also a widely used variant of ACST ( Australian Central Standard Time , UTC+09:30). Conversion between time zones obeys the relationship in which each side of the equation is equivalent to UTC. The conversion equation can be rearranged to For example, the New York Stock Exchange opens at 09:30 ( EST , UTC offset= −05:00). In California ( PST , UTC offset= −08:00) and India ( IST , UTC offset= +05:30),
1870-460: Is convenient for areas in frequent communication to keep the same time. Each time zone is defined by a standard offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The offsets range from UTC−12:00 to UTC+14:00 , and are usually a whole number of hours, but a few zones are offset by an additional 30 or 45 minutes, such as in India and Nepal . Some areas in a time zone may use a different offset for part of
1980-600: Is in the North American Central Time Zone , is " −06:00 " for the winter (Central Standard Time) and " −05:00 " for the summer (Central Daylight Time). Time zones are often represented by alphabetic abbreviations such as "EST", "WST", and "CST", but these are not part of the international time and date standard ISO 8601 . Such designations can be ambiguous; for example, "CST" can mean (North American) Central Standard Time (UTC−06:00), Cuba Standard Time (UTC−05:00) and China Standard Time (UTC+08:00), and it
2090-462: Is to allow the more efficient use of afternoon sunlight. Some of these locations also use daylight saving time (DST), further increasing the difference to local solar time. As a result, in summer, solar noon in the Spanish city of Vigo occurs at 14:41 clock time. This westernmost area of continental Spain never experiences sunset before 18:00 clock time, even in winter, despite lying 42 degrees north of
2200-583: Is updated whenever time zone or daylight saving time rules change. Oracle provides an updater tool for this purpose. As an alternative to the information bundled with the Java Platform, programmers may choose to use the Joda-Time library. This library includes its own data based on the IANA time zone database. As of Java 8 there is a new date and time API that can help with converting times. Traditionally, there
2310-403: Is usually converted to local time when displayed to the user, and times specified by the user in local time are converted to Unix time. The conversion takes into account the time zone and daylight saving time rules; by default the time zone and daylight saving time rules are set up when the system is configured, though individual processes can specify time zones and daylight saving time rules using
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#17328687571842420-557: The 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -mile (5.6 km) Clevedon branch line ; others were much longer such as the 23-mile (37 km) Minehead Branch . A few were promoted and built by the GWR to counter competition from other companies, such as the Reading to Basingstoke Line to keep the London and South Western Railway away from Newbury . However, many were built by local companies that then sold their railway to their larger neighbour; examples include
2530-791: The Appalachian Mountains . Dowd's system was never accepted by North American railroads. Chief meteorologist at the United States Weather Bureau Cleveland Abbe divided the United States into four standard time zones for consistency among the weather stations. In 1879, he published a paper titled Report on Standard Time . In 1883, he convinced North American railroad companies to adopt his time-zone system. In 1884, Britain, which had already adopted its own standard time system for England, Scotland, and Wales, helped gather international consent for global time. In time,
2640-552: The Cambrian Railways . In the early years the GWR was managed by two committees, one in Bristol and one in London. They soon combined as a single board of directors which met in offices at Paddington. The board was led by a chairman and supported by a secretary and other "officers". The first Locomotive Superintendent was Daniel Gooch , although from 1915 the title was changed to Chief Mechanical Engineer. The first Goods Manager
2750-577: The Channel Islands and France. The railway's headquarters were established at Paddington station. Its locomotives and rolling stock were built and maintained at Swindon Works but other workshops were acquired as it amalgamated with other railways, including the Shrewsbury companies' Stafford Road works at Wolverhampton, and the South Devon's workshops at Newton Abbot . Worcester Carriage Works
2860-587: The Channel Islands , operated a network of road motor (bus) routes , was a part of the Railway Air Services , and owned ships , canals, docks and hotels. The Great Western Railway originated from the desire of Bristol merchants to maintain their city as the second port of the country and the chief one for American trade. The increase in the size of ships and the gradual silting of the River Avon had made Liverpool an increasingly attractive port, and with
2970-537: The IANA time zone database and includes the ability to get, set and convert between time zones. The DateTime objects and related functions have been compiled into the PHP core since 5.2. This includes the ability to get and set the default script time zone, and DateTime is aware of its own time zone internally. PHP.net provides extensive documentation on this. As noted there, the most current time zone database can be implemented via
3080-692: The International Meridian Conference , where it received some consideration. The system has not been directly adopted, but some maps divide the world into 24 time zones and assign letters to them, similarly to Fleming's system. By about 1900, almost all inhabited places on Earth had adopted a standard time zone, but only some of them used an hourly offset from GMT. Many applied the time at a local astronomical observatory to an entire country, without any reference to GMT. It took many decades before all time zones were based on some standard offset from GMT or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). By 1929,
3190-774: The Launceston and Brixham branches. Further variety came from the traffic carried: holidaymakers ( St Ives );. royalty ( Windsor ); or just goods traffic ( Carbis Wharf ). Brunel envisaged the GWR continuing across the Atlantic Ocean and built the SS ; Great Western to carry the railway's passengers from Bristol to New York . Most traffic for North America soon switched to the larger port of Liverpool (in other railways' territories) but some transatlantic passengers were landed at Plymouth and conveyed to London by special train. Great Western ships linked Great Britain with Ireland,
3300-583: The Midland Railway and it was converted to standard gauge in 1854, which brought mixed-gauge track to Temple Meads station – this had three rails to allow trains to run on either broad or standard gauge. The GWR extended into the West Midlands in competition with the Midland and the London and North Western Railway . Birmingham was reached through Oxford in 1852 and Wolverhampton in 1854. This
3410-599: The Midland and South Western Junction Railway , a line previously working closely with the Midland Railway but which now gave the GWR a second station at Swindon, along with a line that carried through-traffic from the North via Cheltenham and Andover to Southampton . The 1930s brought hard times but the company remained in fair financial health despite the Depression . The Development (Loans, Guarantees and Grants) Act 1929 allowed
UTC−12:00 - Misplaced Pages Continue
3520-461: The PECL timezonedb. Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway ( GWR ) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales . It was founded in 1833, received its enabling act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It
3630-507: The River Avon , then climbing back up through Chippenham to the Box Tunnel before descending once more to regain the River Avon's valley which it followed to Bath and Bristol. Swindon was also the junction for a line that ran north-westwards to Gloucester then south-westwards on the far side of the River Severn to reach Cardiff , Swansea and west Wales. This route was later shortened by
3740-568: The Standard Time Act of March 19, 1918. Italian mathematician Quirico Filopanti introduced the idea of a worldwide system of time zones in his book Miranda! , published in 1858. He proposed 24 hourly time zones, which he called "longitudinal days", the first centred on the meridian of Rome . He also proposed a universal time to be used in astronomy and telegraphy. However, his book attracted no attention until long after his death. Scottish -born Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming proposed
3850-507: The TZ environment variable . This allows users in multiple time zones, or in the same time zone but with different daylight saving time rules, to use the same computer, with their respective local times displayed correctly to each user. Time zone and daylight saving time rule information most commonly comes from the IANA time zone database . In fact, many systems, including anything using the GNU C Library ,
3960-644: The West Country as well as the far southwest of England such as Torquay in Devon, Minehead in Somerset , and Newquay and St Ives in Cornwall . The company's locomotives, many of which were built in the company's workshops at Swindon , were painted a middle chrome green colour while, for most of its existence, it used a two-tone "chocolate and cream" livery for its passenger coaches. Goods wagons were painted red but this
4070-611: The " grouping ", under which smaller companies were amalgamated into four main companies in 1922 and 1923. The GWR built a war memorial at Paddington station, unveiled in 1922, in memory of its employees who were killed in the war. The new Great Western Railway had more routes in Wales, including 295 miles (475 km) of former Cambrian Railways lines and 124 miles (200 km) from the Taff Vale Railway . A few independent lines in its English area of operations were also added, notably
4180-454: The "gauge war" and led to the appointment by Parliament of a Gauge Commission , which reported in 1846 in favour of standard gauge so the 7-foot gauge was proscribed by law ( Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act 1846 ) except for the southwest of England and Wales where connected to the GWR network. Other railways in Britain were to use standard gauge. In 1846, the Bristol and Gloucester was bought by
4290-597: The 1-mile-1,452-yard (2.94 km) Box Tunnel , which was ready for trains on 30 June 1841, after which trains ran the 152 miles (245 km) from Paddington through to Bridgwater. In 1851, the GWR purchased the Kennet and Avon Canal , which was a competing carrier between London, Reading, Bath and Bristol. The GWR was closely involved with the C&;GWUR and the B&;ER and with several other broad-gauge railways. The South Devon Railway
4400-531: The American government, influenced in part by Abbe's 1879 paper, adopted the time-zone system. It was a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide . The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit , Buffalo , Pittsburgh , Atlanta , and Charleston . It
4510-691: The British Great Western Railway started using GMT kept by portable chronometers . This practice was soon followed by other railway companies in Great Britain and became known as railway time . Around August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory. By 1855, 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT, but it was not made the island's legal time until August 2, 1880. Some British clocks from this period have two minute hands, one for
UTC−12:00 - Misplaced Pages Continue
4620-671: The DST period California observes UTC−07:00 and the United Kingdom observes UTC+01:00 . The apparent position of the Sun in the sky, and thus solar time , varies by location due to the spherical shape of the Earth. This variation corresponds to four minutes of time for every degree of longitude , so for example when it is solar noon in London , it is about 10 minutes before solar noon in Bristol , which
4730-505: The GWR by Brunel's Chepstow Bridge in 1852. It was completed to Neyland in 1856, where a transatlantic port was established. There was initially no direct line from London to Wales as the tidal River Severn was too wide to cross. Trains instead had to follow a lengthy route via Gloucester, where the river was narrow enough to be crossed by a bridge. Work on the Severn Tunnel had begun in 1873, but unexpected underwater springs delayed
4840-454: The GWR held a large number of shares in the company. One final new broad-gauge route was opened on 1 June 1877, the St Ives branch in west Cornwall , although there was also a small extension at Sutton Harbour in Plymouth in 1879. Part of a mixed gauge point remains at Sutton Harbour, one of the few examples of broad gauge trackwork remaining in situ anywhere. Once the GWR was in control of
4950-447: The GWR route being via Chippenham and a route initially started by the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway . Further west, the LSWR took over the broad-gauge Exeter and Crediton Railway and North Devon Railway , also the standard-gauge Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway . It was several years before these remote lines were connected with the parent LSWR system and any through traffic to them
5060-417: The GWR to obtain money in return for stimulating employment and this was used to improve stations including London Paddington , Bristol Temple Meads and Cardiff General ; to improve facilities at depots and to lay additional tracks to reduce congestion. The road motor services were transferred to local bus companies in which the GWR took a share but instead, it participated in air services . A legacy of
5170-401: The GWR to reach Crewe . Operating agreements with other companies also allowed GWR trains to run to Manchester . South of the London to Bristol main line were routes from Didcot to Southampton via Newbury , and from Chippenham to Weymouth via Westbury . A network of cross-country routes linked these main lines, and there were also many and varied branch lines . Some were short, such as
5280-488: The Midlands but which had been built as standard gauge after several battles, both political and physical. On 1 April 1869, the broad gauge was taken out of use between Oxford and Wolverhampton and from Reading to Basingstoke. In August, the line from Grange Court to Hereford was converted from broad to standard and the whole of the line from Swindon through Gloucester to South Wales was similarly treated in May 1872. In 1874,
5390-635: The New York Stock Exchange opens at These calculations become more complicated near the time switch to or from daylight saving time, as the UTC offset for the area becomes a function of UTC time. The time differences may also result in different dates. For example, when it is 22:00 on Monday in Egypt (UTC+02:00), it is 01:00 on Tuesday in Pakistan (UTC+05:00). The table "Time of day by zone" gives an overview on
5500-588: The Terminal Server so that users see the correct time for their time zone in their desktop/application sessions. Terminal Services uses the server base time on the Terminal Server and the client time zone information to calculate the time in the session. While most application software will use the underlying operating system for time zone and daylight saving time rule information, the Java Platform , from version 1.3.1, has maintained its own database of time zone and daylight saving time rule information. This database
5610-578: The Thames twice and opened for traffic on 1 June 1840. A 7 + 1 ⁄ 4 -mile (12 km) extension took the line to Faringdon Road on 20 July 1840. Meanwhile, work had started at the Bristol end of the line, where the 11 + 1 ⁄ 2 -mile (19 km) section to Bath opened on 31 August 1840. On 17 December 1840, the line from London reached a temporary terminus at Wootton Bassett Road west of Swindon and 80.25 miles (129 km) from Paddington. The section from Wootton Bassett Road to Chippenham
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#17328687571845720-517: The US state of Alaska , Fiji , Tokelau and Samoa . However, none of them keep the date and time of UTC−12:00. Instead, they keep the time and date (or just the date) of one of the neighboring zones, usually because they belong, politically, to a country which lies mostly in the neighboring time zone. Since the International Date Line West (IDLW) time zone represents the last place on Earth
5830-481: The US version shows Eastern Time . US Eastern Time and Pacific Time are also used fairly commonly on many US-based English-language websites with global readership. The format is typically based in the W3C Note "datetime". Email systems and other messaging systems ( IRC chat , etc.) time-stamp messages using UTC, or else include the sender's time zone as part of the message, allowing the receiving program to display
5940-464: The article on daylight saving time for more details on this aspect.) Web servers presenting web pages primarily for an audience in a single time zone or a limited range of time zones typically show times as a local time, perhaps with UTC time in brackets. More internationally oriented websites may show times in UTC only or using an arbitrary time zone. For example, the international English-language version of CNN includes GMT and Hong Kong Time, whereas
6050-465: The begin and end dates of daylight saving time are changed, calendar entries should stay the same in local time, even though they may shift in UTC time. Unix-like systems, including Linux and macOS , keep system time in Unix time format, representing the number of seconds (excluding leap seconds ) that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on Thursday, January 1, 1970. Unix time
6160-471: The broad gauge was that trains for some routes could be built slightly wider than was normal in Britain and these included the 1929-built " Super Saloons " used on the boat train services that conveyed transatlantic passengers to London in luxury. When the company celebrated its centenary during 1935, new "Centenary" carriages were built for the Cornish Riviera Express, which again made full use of
6270-455: The broad-gauge Bristol and Gloucester Railway had opened, but Gloucester was already served by the 4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in ( 1,435 mm ) standard gauge lines of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway . This resulted in a break-of-gauge that forced all passengers and goods to change trains if travelling between the south-west and the North. This was the beginning of
6380-543: The calendar events are assumed to take place in the time zone the computer or smartphone was on when creating the event. The event can be shown at the wrong time. For example, if a New Yorker plans to meet someone in Los Angeles at 9 am, and makes a calendar entry at 9 am (which the computer assumes is New York time), the calendar entry will be at 6 am if taking the computer's time zone. Calendaring software must also deal with daylight saving time (DST). If, for political reasons,
6490-540: The company's previously circuitous routes. The principal new lines opened were: The generally conservative GWR made other improvements in the years before World War I such as restaurant cars, better conditions for third class passengers, steam heating of trains, and faster express services. These were largely at the initiative of T. I. Allen, the Superintendent of the Line and one of a group of talented senior managers who led
6600-407: The entire length of the route between London and Bristol himself, with the help of many, including his solicitor, Jeremiah Osborne of the Bristol law firm Osborne Clarke , who on one occasion rowed Brunel down the River Avon to survey the bank of the river for the route. George Thomas Clark played an important role as an engineer on the project, reputedly taking the management of two divisions of
6710-463: The equator. Near the summer solstice , Vigo has sunset times after 22:00, similar to those of Stockholm , which is in the same time zone and 17 degrees farther north. Stockholm has much earlier sunrises, though. In the United States, the reasons were more historical and business-related. In Midwestern states, like Indiana and Michigan , those living in Indianapolis and Detroit wanted to be on
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#17328687571846820-449: The greatest terrestrial time zone difference on Earth, with a 3.5 hour difference between Afghanistan's UTC+4:30 and China's UTC+08:00 . Many countries, and sometimes just certain regions of countries, adopt daylight saving time (DST), also known as summer time, during part of the year. This typically involves advancing clocks by an hour near the start of spring and adjusting back in autumn ("spring forward", "fall back"). Modern DST
6930-512: The local time and one for GMT. On November 2, 1868, the British Colony of New Zealand officially adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony. It was based on longitude 172°30′ east of Greenwich , that is 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time . Timekeeping on North American railroads in the 19th century was complex. Each railroad used its own standard time, usually based on
7040-413: The local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, and the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Some junctions served by several railroads had a clock for each railroad, each showing a different time. Because of this a number of accidents occurred when trains from different companies using the same tracks mistimed their passings. Around 1863, Charles F. Dowd proposed
7150-554: The majority of countries had adopted hourly time zones, though some countries such as Iran , India , Myanmar and parts of Australia had time zones with a 30-minute offset. Nepal was the last country to adopt a standard offset, shifting slightly to UTC+05:45 in 1986. All nations currently use standard time zones for secular purposes, but not all of them apply the concept as originally conceived. Several countries and subdivisions use half-hour or quarter-hour deviations from standard time. Some countries, such as China and India , use
7260-589: The masterpieces of railway design". Working westwards from Paddington, the line crosses the valley of the River Brent on Wharncliffe Viaduct and the River Thames on Maidenhead Railway Bridge , which at the time of construction was the largest span achieved by a brick arch bridge. The line then continues through Sonning Cutting before reaching Reading after which it crosses the Thames twice more, on Gatehampton and Moulsford bridges. Between Chippenham and Bath
7370-653: The message's date and time of sending in the recipient's local time. Database records that include a time stamp typically use UTC, especially when the database is part of a system that spans multiple time zones. The use of local time for time-stamping records is not recommended for time zones that implement daylight saving time because once a year there is a one-hour period when local times are ambiguous. Calendar systems nowadays usually tie their time stamps to UTC, and show them differently on computers that are in different time zones. That works when having telephone or internet meetings. It works less well when travelling, because
7480-419: The mixed gauge was extended along the main line to Chippenham and the line from there to Weymouth was narrowed. The following year saw mixed gauge laid through the Box Tunnel, with the broad gauge now retained only for through services beyond Bristol and on a few branch lines. The Bristol and Exeter Railway amalgamated with the GWR on 1 January 1876. It had already made a start on mixing the gauge on its line,
7590-416: The necessary support for working with all (or almost all) possible local times based on the various time zones. Internally, operating systems typically use UTC as their basic time-keeping standard , while providing services for converting local times to and from UTC, and also the ability to automatically change local time conversions at the start and end of daylight saving time in the various time zones. (See
7700-461: The network. The original Great Western Main Line linked London Paddington station with Temple Meads station in Bristol by way of Reading , Didcot , Swindon , Chippenham and Bath . This line was extended westwards through Exeter and Plymouth to reach Truro and Penzance , the most westerly railway station in England. Brunel and Gooch placed the GWR's main locomotive workshops close to
7810-447: The north of England to the south coast (via the London and South Western Railway – LSWR) without transshipment . The line to Basingstoke had originally been built by the Berks and Hants Railway as a broad-gauge route in an attempt to keep the standard gauge of the LSWR out of Great Western territory but, in 1857, the GWR and LSWR opened a shared line to Weymouth on the south coast,
7920-488: The opening of a more direct east–west route through the Severn Tunnel . Another route ran northwards from Didcot to Oxford from where two different routes continued to Wolverhampton , one through Birmingham and the other through Worcester . Beyond Wolverhampton the line continued via Shrewsbury to Chester and (via a joint line with the LNWR ) onwards to Birkenhead and Warrington ; another route via Market Drayton enabled
8030-439: The outbreak of World War I in 1914, the GWR was taken into government control, as were most major railways in Britain. Many of its staff joined the armed forces and it was more difficult to build and maintain equipment than in peacetime. After the war, the government considered permanent nationalisation but decided instead on a compulsory amalgamation of the railways into four large groups. The GWR alone preserved its name through
8140-506: The possibility of large wheels outside the bodies of the rolling stock which could give smoother running at high speeds. Secondly, he selected a route, north of the Marlborough Downs , which had no significant towns but which offered potential connections to Oxford and Gloucester . This meant the line was not direct from London to Bristol. From Reading heading west, the line would curve in a northerly sweep back to Bath. Brunel surveyed
8250-624: The railway into the Edwardian era : Viscount Emlyn ( Earl Cawdor , Chairman from 1895 to 1905); Sir Joseph Wilkinson (general manager from 1896 to 1903), his successor, the former chief engineer Sir James Inglis; and George Jackson Churchward (the Chief Mechanical Engineer ). It was during this period that the GWR introduced road motor services as an alternative to building new lines in rural areas, and started using steam rail motors to bring cheaper operation to existing branch lines. At
8360-590: The route including bridges over the River Thames at Lower Basildon and Moulsford and of Paddington Station . Involvement in major earth-moving works seems to have fed Clark's interest in geology and archaeology and he, anonymously, authored two guidebooks on the railway: one illustrated with lithographs by John Cooke Bourne ; the other, a critique of Brunel's methods and the broad gauge. The first 22 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles (36 km) of line, from Paddington station in London to Maidenhead Bridge station , opened on 4 June 1838. When Maidenhead Railway Bridge
8470-472: The same as on the developer's computer. Since the area of the IDLW has no programmers or data centers, there is no conflict. Time zone#Nautical time zones A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal , commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude , because it
8580-486: The same meridian but north of the Arctic Circle, has two sunsets on the same day in early August, one shortly after midnight at the start of the day, and the other shortly before midnight at the end of the day. China extends as far west as 73°E , but all parts of it use UTC+08:00 ( 120°E ), so solar "noon" can occur as late as 15:00 in western portions of China such as Xinjiang . The Afghanistan-China border marks
8690-558: The same route in June 1879 and became known as The Zulu . A third West Country express was introduced in 1890, running to and from Penzance as The Cornishman . A new service, the Cornish Riviera Express ran between London and Penzance – non-stop to Plymouth – from 1 July 1904, although it ran only in the summer during 1904 and 1905 before becoming a permanent feature of the timetable in 1906. The Cheltenham Spa Express
8800-419: The same time zone as New York to simplify communications and transactions. A more extreme example is Nome, Alaska , which is at 165°24′W longitude – just west of center of the idealized Samoa Time Zone ( 165°W ). Nevertheless, Nome observes Alaska Time ( 135°W ) with DST so it is slightly more than two hours ahead of the sun in winter and over three in summer. Kotzebue, Alaska , also near
8910-465: The system time to be fetched as a count of 100 ns units since 1601-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. The system registry contains time zone information that includes the offset from UTC and rules that indicate the start and end dates for daylight saving in each zone. Interaction with the user normally uses local time, and application software is able to calculate the time in various zones. Terminal Servers allow remote computers to redirect their time zone settings to
9020-519: The time being described is one hour ahead of UTC (such as the time in Germany during the winter), the zone designator would be " +01:00 ", "+0100", or simply "+01". This numeric representation of time zones is appended to local times in the same way that alphabetic time zone abbreviations (or "Z", as above) are appended. The offset from UTC changes with daylight saving time , e.g. a time offset in Chicago , which
9130-548: The time relations between different zones. Since the 1920s, a nautical standard time system has been in operation for ships on the high seas . As an ideal form of the terrestrial time zone system, nautical time zones consist of gores of 15° offset from GMT by a whole number of hours. A nautical date line follows the 180th meridian, bisecting one 15° gore into two 7.5° gores that differ from GMT by ±12 hours. However, in practice each ship may choose what time to observe at each location. Ships may decide to adjust their clocks at
9240-472: The village of Swindon and the locomotives of many trains were changed here in the early years. Up to this point the route had climbed very gradually westwards from London, but from here it changed into one with steeper gradients which, with the primitive locomotives available to Brunel, was better operated by types with smaller wheels better able to climb the hills. These gradients faced both directions, first dropping down through Wootton Bassett Junction to cross
9350-429: The volume of third-class passengers grew to the extent that second-class facilities were withdrawn in 1912. The Cheap Trains Act 1883 resulted in the provision of workmen's trains at special low fares at certain times of the day. The principal express services were often given nicknames by railwaymen but these names later appeared officially in timetables, on headboards carried on the locomotive, and on roofboards above
9460-465: The war. Similarly, prior to World War II, the Netherlands observed "Amsterdam Time", which was twenty minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. They were obliged to follow German time during the war, and kept it thereafter. In the mid-1970s the Netherlands, as other European states, began observing daylight saving (summer) time. One reason to draw time zone boundaries far to the west of their ideal meridians
9570-565: The west, and some countries are located entirely outside their ideal time zones. For example, even though the Prime Meridian (0°) passes through Spain and France , they use the mean solar time of 15 degrees east ( Central European Time ) rather than 0 degrees (Greenwich Mean Time). France previously used GMT, but was switched to CET (Central European Time) during the German occupation of the country during World War II and did not switch back after
9680-540: The western reaches of China. In Russia, which has 11 time zones , two time zones were removed in 2010 and reinstated in 2014. ISO 8601 is a standard established by the International Organization for Standardization defining methods of representing dates and times in textual form, including specifications for representing time zones. If a time is in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a "Z"
9790-429: The whole line from London to Penzance, it set about converting the remaining broad-gauge tracks. The last broad-gauge service left Paddington station on Friday, 20 May 1892; the following Monday, trains from Penzance were operated by standard-gauge locomotives. After 1892, with the burden of operating trains on two gauges removed, the company turned its attention to constructing new lines and upgrading old ones to shorten
9900-496: The wider loading gauge on that route. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the GWR returned to direct government control, and by the end of the war a Labour government was in power and again planning to nationalise the railways. After a couple of years trying to recover from the ravages of war, the GWR became the Western Region of British Railways on 1 January 1948. The Great Western Railway Company continued to exist as
10010-460: The windows of the carriages. For instance, the late-morning Flying Dutchman express between London and Exeter was named after the winning horse of the Derby and St Leger races in 1849. Although withdrawn at the end of 1867, the name was revived in 1869 – following a request from the Bristol and Exeter Railway – and the train ran through to Plymouth. An afternoon express was instigated on
10120-401: The work and prevented its opening until 1886. Brunel had devised a 7 ft ( 2,134 mm ) track gauge for his railways in 1835. He later added 1 ⁄ 4 inch (6.4 mm), probably to reduce friction of the wheel sets in curves. This became the 7 ft 1 ⁄ 4 in ( 2,140 mm ) broad gauge. Either gauge may be referred to as "Brunel's" gauge. In 1844,
10230-441: The year, typically one hour ahead during spring and summer , a practice known as daylight saving time (DST). In the table below, the locations that use daylight saving time (DST) are listed in their UTC offset when DST is not in effect. When DST is in effect, approximately during spring and summer, their UTC offset is increased by one hour (except for Lord Howe Island , where it is increased by 30 minutes). For example, during
10340-459: Was Detroit (located about halfway between the meridians of Eastern and Central time), which kept local time until 1900, then tried Central Standard Time, local mean time , and Eastern Standard Time (EST) before a May 1915 ordinance settled on EST and was ratified by popular vote in August 1916. The confusion of times came to an end when standard time zones were formally adopted by the U.S. Congress in
10450-470: Was appointed engineer on 7 March 1833. The name Great Western Railway was adopted on 19 August 1833, and the company and was incorporated by the Great Western Railway Act 1835 ( 5 & 6 Will. 4 . c. cvii) on 31 August 1835. This was by far Brunel's largest contract to date. He made two controversial decisions. Firstly, he chose to use a broad gauge of 7 ft ( 2,134 mm ) to allow for
10560-475: Was appointed in 1850 and from 1857 this position was filled by James Grierson until 1863 when he became the first general manager. In 1864 the post of Superintendent of the Line was created to oversee the running of the trains. Early trains offered passengers a choice of first- or second-class carriages . In 1840 this choice was extended: passengers could be conveyed by the slow goods trains in what became third-class. The Railway Regulation Act 1844 made it
10670-635: Was completed in 1849, extending the broad gauge to Plymouth , whence the Cornwall Railway took it over the Royal Albert Bridge and into Cornwall in 1859 and, in 1867, it reached Penzance over the West Cornwall Railway which originally had been laid in 1852 with the 4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in ( 1,435 mm ) standard gauge or "narrow gauge" as it was known at the time. The South Wales Railway had opened between Chepstow and Swansea in 1850 and became connected to
10780-435: Was created by flattening land north of Worcester Shrub Hill Station , Reading Signal Works was established in buildings to the north of Reading railway station , and in later years a concrete manufacturing depot was established at Taunton where items ranging from track components to bridges were cast. More than 150 years after its creation, the original main line has been described by historian Steven Brindle as "one of
10890-406: Was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel , who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft ( 2,134 mm )—later slightly widened to 7 ft 1 ⁄ 4 in ( 2,140 mm )—but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in ( 1,435 mm ) standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR
11000-415: Was first proposed in 1907 and was in widespread use in 1916 as a wartime measure aimed at conserving coal . Despite controversy , many countries have used it off and on since then; details vary by location and change occasionally. Countries around the equator usually do not observe daylight saving time, since the seasonal difference in sunlight there is minimal. Many computer operating systems include
11110-547: Was handled by the GWR and its associated companies. By now the gauge war was lost and mixed gauge was brought to Paddington in 1861, allowing through passenger trains from London to Chester. The broad-gauge South Wales Railway amalgamated with the GWR in 1862, as did the West Midland Railway , which brought with it the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway , a line that had been conceived as another broad-gauge route to
11220-403: Was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883, also called "The Day of Two Noons", when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone. The North American zones were named Intercolonial, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Within a year 85% of all cities with populations over 10,000 (about 200 cities) were using standard time. A notable exception
11330-553: Was later changed to mid-grey. Great Western trains included long-distance express services such as the Flying Dutchman , the Cornish Riviera Express and the Cheltenham Spa Express . It also operated many suburban and rural services, some operated by steam rail motors or autotrains . The company pioneered the use of larger, more economic goods wagons than were usual in Britain. It ran ferry services to Ireland and
11440-457: Was opened on 31 May 1841, as was Swindon Junction station where the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway (C&GWUR) to Cirencester connected. That was an independent line worked by the GWR, as was the Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&ER), the first section of which from Bristol to Bridgwater was opened on 14 June 1841. The GWR main line remained incomplete during the construction of
11550-576: Was ready the line was extended to Twyford on 1 July 1839 and then through the deep Sonning Cutting to Reading on 30 March 1840. The cutting was the scene of a railway disaster two years later when a goods train ran into a landslip ; ten passengers who were travelling in open trucks were killed. This accident prompted Parliament to pass the Railway Regulation Act 1844 , requiring railway companies to provide better carriages for passengers. The next section, from Reading to Steventon crossed
11660-761: Was revived by Great Western Trains , the train operating company providing passenger services on the old GWR routes to South Wales and the South West. This subsequently became First Great Western, as part of the FirstGroup , but in September 2015 changed its name to Great Western Railway in order to 'reinstate the ideals of our founder'. The operating infrastructure, however, was transferred to Railtrack and has since passed to Network Rail . These companies have continued to preserve appropriate parts of its stations and bridges so historic GWR structures can still be recognised around
11770-643: Was the fastest train in the world when it was scheduled to cover the 77.25 miles (124.3 km) between Swindon and London at an average of 71.3 miles per hour (114.7 km/h). The train was nicknamed the 'Cheltenham Flyer' and featured in one of the GWR's 'Books for boys of all ages'. Other named trains included The Bristolian , running between London and Bristol from 1935, and the Torbay Express , which ran between London and Kingswear . Many of these fast expresses included special coaches that could be detached as they passed through stations without stopping,
11880-479: Was the furthest north that the broad gauge reached. In the same year the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway and the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway both amalgamated with the GWR, but these lines were standard gauge, and the GWR's own line north of Oxford had been built with mixed gauge. This mixed gauge was extended southwards from Oxford to Basingstoke at the end of 1856 and so allowed through goods traffic from
11990-532: Was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921 , which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways . The GWR was called by some "God's Wonderful Railway" and by others the "Great Way Round" but it was famed as the "Holiday Line", taking many people to English and Bristol Channel resorts in
12100-665: Was very little in the way of time zone support for JavaScript . Essentially the programmer had to extract the UTC offset by instantiating a time object, getting a GMT time from it, and differencing the two. This does not provide a solution for more complex daylight saving variations, such as divergent DST directions between northern and southern hemispheres. ECMA-402, the standard on Internationalization API for JavaScript, provides ways of formatting Time Zones. However, due to size constraint, some implementations or distributions do not include it. The DateTime object in Perl supports all entries in
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