Malcom Purves asked: >UT once upon a time(ho!) was UTC , Universal Time Coordinated >who messed up on the word order ? Why not Coordinated Universal Time ? >CUT ?
Those initials were assigned in French. The official international atomic time scale is maintained by the Bureau International de l'Heure (BIH), or in English, the International Time Bureau. Note the parallel word order change in the English translations of UTC and BIH. W. Maddux
