Richard Clark wrote:
On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:06:49 -0700, Jim Lux
wrote:


hear the tocks fairly clearly and even understand the voice. (Who
knew the announcer's phrase for UTC "Coordinated Universal Time"?).

UTC is not an acronym. It's a madeup identifier that matches neither
the English (Coordinated Universal Time) or the French (T U C.. I won't
even attempt to figure out what it is..).


Hi All,

In fact, UTC is an acronym (already anticipated by Frnak and
explicitly stated every minute). It is but one of several, this one
being rather genericized (because any longer would force a lot of
talking, and minute passes by pretty quickly). The others would
include: UTC(NIST), UT1; and the academic UT0, and UT2.

Au contraire...
while UT1, UT0, and UT2 are, in fact, acronyms of a sort, primarily
based on astronomical time, this is not the case for UTC..

the coordination has to do with matching up UT and TAI (atomic) time..
all those leap seconds, etc.

As one online source puts it:
The (Bureau Internationale de l'Heure) BIH was charged with the task of
monitoring and maintaining the program and introduced the term Temps
Universel Coordinné or Coordinated Universal Time for the coordinated
time scale in 1964.

BIH is the predecessor of the current BIPM (who seem to have a problem
with the standard kilo losing mass) http://www.bipm.org/


or, for more information:
http://syrte.obspm.fr/journees2004/PDF/Arias2.pdf

which says: The name of Coordinated Universal Time UTC appeared in CCIR
documents in the early 60s.

One might also seek a paper from 1964, by Guinot. (who was a time guy at
the BIH back then)

A paper by Dennis McCarthy at USNO on "Evolution of Time Scales"
mentions in Section 6 that: the term "Coordinated Universal Time" was
introduced in the 1950s to designate a time scale in which the
adjustments to quartz crystal clocks were coordinated among
participating laboratories in the US and UK.


A more recent paper by Guinot says:
"Until 1965, the more or less common scale for emission of signals,
which had received spontaneously the name of Coordinated Universal Time
(UTC), had not been strictly defined."



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..

Given that Coordinated Universal Time existed well before UTC, I suspect
that the comma thing is a post hoc creation.


Wikipedia reports this as an erroneous
expansion, but Wikipedia wasn't there in my Metrology classes (a
couple dozen miles from NBS) where we worked with these NBS standards.
It wasn't there when (1974) I performed the second leap second on my
Cesium Beam Standard which was calibrated through WWVB (taking about
half an hour, part of which was waiting during the roughly 15 minute
intervals between TOCs). My antenna was so far away (on the fantail
of the ship in another "time zone"), that I had to slip the time by
100nS.

Jim Lux wrote:
Richard Clark 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..

Given that Coordinated Universal Time existed well before UTC, I suspect
that the comma thing is a post hoc creation.

Not everything is English, folks. UTC is for Universale Temps
Coordinaire. No comma is implied or needed because in French, an
adjective follows the word it modifies, with very few exceptions.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy Lewallen wrote in
:

Not everything is English, folks. UTC is for Universale Temps
Coordinaire. No comma is implied or needed because in French, an
adjective follows the word it modifies, with very few exceptions.

Then wouldn't it be Temps Universale Coordinaire?

Owen

Owen Duffy wrote:
Roy Lewallen wrote in
:

Not everything is English, folks. UTC is for Universale Temps
Coordinaire. No comma is implied or needed because in French, an
adjective follows the word it modifies, with very few exceptions.

Then wouldn't it be Temps Universale Coordinaire?

Good point. This should be reported to the French language police!

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy Lewallen wrote in
:

Owen Duffy wrote:
Roy Lewallen wrote in
:

Not everything is English, folks. UTC is for Universale Temps
Coordinaire. No comma is implied or needed because in French, an
adjective follows the word it modifies, with very few exceptions.

Then wouldn't it be Temps Universale Coordinaire?

Good point. This should be reported to the French language police!

Roy Lewallen, W7EL


Roy, I think that as others have posted, it is neither English nor
French, but a *******isation that doesn't concede either language to be
the better for expressing the meaning. The diplomacy aspect of striking
standards no doubt!

Owen

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:

Title 15 1971 Code of Federal Regulations By United States Office of
the Federal Register (1971)
"... the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC)
system' as recommended by the Bureau
International de l'Heure (bill).
The carrier offset currently is minus 300 ..."

Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts By American
Meteorological Society (1960)

International Aerospace Abstracts
By American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Technical
Information Service, United States National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, Institute of the Aerospace Sciences Technical
Information Service (1961)

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

Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports
By United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Scientific and Technical Information Division, United States National
Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scientific and Technical
Information Office, NASA Scientific and Technical Information
Facility, United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Scientific and Technical Information Branch, NASA Center for AeroSpace
Information, United States. National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. Office of Scientific and Technical Information (1963)

Navigation Dictionary By United States Naval Oceanographic Office
(1969)

New Scientist By EBSCO Publishing (1971)

Basic Electronic Instrument Handbook By Clyde F. Coombs (1972)

Newer titles:

UPI Style Book & Guide to Newswriting By Harold Martin, Bruce Cook

Dictionnaire des sciences et techniques du pétrole By Magdeleine
Moureau, Gerald Brace

Acronyms, Initialisms & Abbreviations Dictionary By Ellen T. Crowley

GPS Satellite Surveying By Alfred Leick

All of 10 minutes (give or take).

Familiar with any service acronyms like BFD?

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

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