Regarding my lack of knowledge over time zones, I think it is a good idea to put some of the time zone terms here, so I, and others, understand them!

Starting with what I always refer to as "board time", currently that is PDT Pacific Daylight Time since it is Daylight Savings Time here in the U.S. This would be Asa and Tinman's time zone. Let's use the example from our chat experiences here of 10:00 am PDT and calculate the other zones listed in this entry to this time.

I am located in EDT, Eastern Daylight Time. That would be 1:00 pm EDT.

Kalleh, Shufitz, and CJ (among others) are in CDT, Central Daylight Time. That would be 12:00 Noon CDT.

The above time zones were using Daylight Savings Time which we are in until 2:00 am on October 26th, 2003. Then we set our clocks back one hour and the time zones become PST, CST, and EST accordingly. There is also a MST, Mountain Standard Time, but I don't think we currently have any member of the board in that zone.

Now, according to my little world clock I have on my desk, Jerry, in Hawaii would see this same time period as 8:00 am, but I don't know what the correct name for the time zone is. Can you shed some light on this for me Jerry? Make sure I have the calculation of the time as well as the time zone name, please?

Now comes the confusing part for me, and I am depending upon Richard, Arnie, or another Brit to help me here. I know there is UTC and GMT, but I am confused as to their usage. I believe this same time we are talking about calculates to 1800, but I am not sure. Would one of you explain this to me?

And I haven't a clue as to the other time zone names or calculations around the world. If the bear is around, could you help me out too?

So:
10:00 am PDT is Board Time.
12:00 Noon CDT is Central Time.
1:00 pm EDT is Eastern Time (my time).
8:00 am is Jerry's time.

Looking for answers from the rest of you, please!

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Can you shed some light on this for me Jerry? Make sure I have the calculation of the time as well as the time zone name, please?

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This is the easy one. It's always HST (Hawaii Standard Time) in Hawaii, because Hawaii is one of the places that never changes to Daylight Time.

10:00 PDT is 07:00 HST.

10:00 PST is 08:00 HST.

Other parts of the USA that don't change are the part of Indiana that's "really" Chicagoland, and the sovereign State of Arizona.

Next question?

~~~ jerry

Morgan, if it helps, I, too, am confused. I convene telephone conferences with each state monthly. Besides states, we have Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. I have always used CST for our posted time. However, after we changed to daylight standard time, I confused everyone with "CST". I had never heard of CDT!

[This message was edited by Kalleh on Mon Aug 4th, 2003 at 21:18.]

Sometimes in my solitude I am tempted to call the International Date Line and see what they have to offer. Does anyone have their phone number?

Kalleh, you might need to hire an assistant who specializes in Time. That person might remind you that it's not "Daylight Standard Time." It's either Daylight Time or Standard Time -- not both.

This reminds me of my Chinese friend who gave up on searching for the right word in speaking of distances and invented the "kilo-mile."

BTW, a memorable event in my experience of living in Buenos Aires in the sixties: On an autumn day in April they decided to go on Daylight Saving Time. Utter and total chaos resulted. Nobody made it to work on time. After ten days they went back to Standard Time and settled back into the much milder routine chaos.

10:00 am PDT is Board Time.
12:00 Noon CDT is Central Time.
1:00 pm EDT is Eastern Time (my time).
7:00 am HST is Jerry's time.

There's a very useful website here

Regarding GMT/UTC, we're in Daylight Saving as well at the moment, and yes, 10 am in California is 6 pm in Britain. I'm assuming California is Pacific Time?

GMT and UTC are the same time, just different words for it. Confusingly for some people, GMT always stays the same - when Britain goes into daylight savings time, GMT doesn't follow. We are currently running at GMT +1.

Ros

Although it is a guess, I suspect that there was presssure brought to bear by countries who thought is was wrong for the zero meridian (from which all times are calcukated) to take the name of a small village near to London. Thus was created UTC The Universal Time Cordinate.

People in the business of international communications always use UTC since, as I have already pointed out, only one calculation is ever required to convert from UTC to clock time.

Thus, by using the website suggested, it is possible to see at a glance that the time now in Illinois is 0838 which equates to 1338 UTC. In the UK we are presently an hour ahead of UTC which means its 1438 here.

The site also allows forward calculations which means that it's possible to enter a forward date and time and to find out the equivalent time anywhere else.

Richard English

Of course here, we're an hour ahead of British Summer Time (BST) at CEST (Central European Standard Time.

It's interesting to note that Portugal, (West of the UK) also uses CEST.

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Kalleh, you might need to hire an assistant who specializes in Time.

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Okay, so I am not an expert with time. When you read this thread, you see that it isn't quite as simple as one might think!

It would be interesting were it true! In fact, Portugal uses GMT/UTC. Spain, on the other had, whose most westerly extremity is slightly nearer to the USA than is any part of Portugal, does use CET.

Richard English