Dear sun and time watchers, Private e-mail communication with Robert van Gent has provided an insight that might be interesting to some of you.
I earlier wrote: "In the simple case of 24 time zones at 1 hour intervals, and an international date line between two of them, we have the following situation." This is a hypothetical situation. The actual decision of the 1884 International Meridian Conference was to have the IDL not between two time zones, but to bisect the time zone 'opposite' the Greenwich time zone. The two halves thus have the same time, but differ by a day. The number of time zones consequently was 25, not 24. Regards, Frans ===================================== Frans W. Maes Peize, The Netherlands 53.1 N, 6.5 E www.biol.rug.nl/maes/ =====================================