Richard Clark wrote:
On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:43:53 -0700, Jim Lux
wrote:


The reason for the initials order is that there is an hidden comma.
Universal Time, Coordinated.

Funny, thing, though, that if one searches the literature of the time
for that particular sequence of words, it never occurs..


You are writing to one who read the literature - at that time. My
experience is not from arm chair history 101. UTC was arrived at as a
compromise between the French (naturally) and the "rest of the world"
(what else?). My bona fides are documented too: two diplomas from the
only Metrology school in the United States - at that time. Time in
service: with training in calibration and maintenance of the HP Cesium
Beam standard, and VLF subsystem - at that time. I also lived through
the great switch-over from cycles to hertz, and GMT to Zulu - at that
time (or slightly before... I wasn't looking at the clock that day).

I can flood this page with 250 references that employ the strict usage
of "Universal Time Coordinated" "Universal Time, Coordinated" or
"Universal Time (Coordinated)" and specifically 35 of them printed
before 1967. With google it takes more time to cut and paste than
actually find them. A short list includes:



I defer to your googling skills..

I tried the search above, turned up nothing (other than obvious
derivative works like the wikipedia entry) in the first 10 pages of
hits, and took the references from BIH as definitive.

(I also tried WebOfScience, etc.)

I also didn't trust references from post, say, 1970, because by then,
you'd have seen definitions created by "back-formation" (i.e. finding
words that match the acronym.. which, when it comes right down to it, is
how lots of acronyms get created in the first place)



Proceedings of the IEEE. By Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (1963)

Looked for this one, and couldn't find it. Which month?
The oldest paper in Proceedings that has the term "universal time" in it
is Hudson's paper in June 1967, p815 ff

It refers to CCIR recommendation 374.1 and CCIR reports 365 (in 1965)
and 366 in connection with the discussion of UTC and SAT, but doesn't
actually define UTC, nor does it provide a reference to a defining
source. (other than a "in press" paper by Cord and Hudson, "Some trends
in UT")

Smith's paper in the Proceedings in May 1972, seems to provide a fairly
definitive history (page 481) citing the CCIR Study Group 7 Interim
meeting in 1962 and CCIR Xth Plenary Assembly in 1963 (Vol III, p193),
as well as an earlier recommendation of the IAU XIth General Assembly in
1961 ("Resolutions adopted by comm. 31" Trans IAU, Vol XI B(1961), p 329)



Familiar with any service acronyms like BFD?

Sure.. but this is really a Tiny FD..

But, I really would like to find a definitive printed reference, as
opposed to the recollections of folks present at the birth. Think of it
as something akin to the citations in the OED. Once you have that
golden reference, discussions like this one end in a hurry.

It's also because I'm casually interested in the obscure history of
things like this. A co-worker asked the other day, "Why is wine in 750ml
bottles, and when did it change from whatever they used before the
metric system existed?"... turns out it's actually a fairly recent
change. Another interesting discussion had to do with the use of
"transfer standards" when building the pyramids in Egypt: failure to
calibrate your working cubit against the standard within the calibration
interval was punishable by death. No "For indication only, out of cal"
stickers there, apparently. {I'm also looking for a definitive source
for that story...presumably it would be in hieroglypics.. as one can
imagine, though, there's a lot of very odd stuff out there when you
bring up anything ancient Egypt related)

Jim, W6RMK