An End to British Summer Time?
The new UK government is to look again at the perennial debate about changing the clocks during the summer months from GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) to British Summer Time (BST).
While the move is controversial, with many in Scotland in the north of the UK, unwilling to adopt the change due to the longer dark days of winter they experience over the rest of the country – the move would help synchronise Britain with the rest of Europe.
Despite its positing in the European Union, Britain holds a different timescale to the rest of Europe. People from the UK who travel abroad have to advance their watches an hour every-time they travel to mainland Europe.
In the new proposals, daylight saving time will still continue but the standard winter time will be advanced an hour and a further advancement of an hour for the summer – know as double British Summertime – allowing the UK to have the same time as Europe.
However, despite the problems such a change would have to people; technology will not be affected by any alteration in daylight saving time.
UTC Time
Technology, such as computer networks, all use a universal time – UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). UTC is a global timescale, kept true by an international conglomeration of atomic clocks. This means whether you have a UK based computer network, or a one on the other side of the world, to the technologies – the time is the same.
Most technologies receive this time from an atomic clock source using devices known as NTP servers (after the time protocol: Network Time Protocol). NTP servers take advantage of the atomic clocks onboard GPS satellites so they can not only supply an accurate source of time but they can assure that the time source never drifts.
Other methods of getting an atomic clock source of time include using medium wave transmissions broadcast by places like the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) or the American National Institute for Standards and Time.
NTP servers ensure that no matter where you are in the world the source of time your computers and technology utilise is always Coordinated Universal Time – no matter what the time of year.
