The clocks have just changed again. We are now on British Summer Time, 1 hour ahead of Greenwich Mean time, and still one hour behind the rest of western Europe.
The debate has re-opened on the subject of daylight saving and whether we should be on the same time as Europe, which means we would never be on GMT. There are pros and cons and I am not going to go into that here. However it did make me think about GMT and how it came about.
GMT was established as a World standard in 1675 for shipping as a response to more regular travel, particularly to the New World. However as recently as the 19th century the time in Britain depended on where you were, so varied by a few minutes from place to place. The introduction of railways, which needed a standard timetable, brought the issue to a head and from the late 19th century all of Britain adhered to GMT.
Britain was then the first country to introduce a different Summer time in 1908.
More on GMT and Greenwich
