> The legal system in the US (and many other countries) is based on > solar time, so it would break legal timekeeping.
It is only kinda based on solar time. And only at certain locations, It is true that the definition of the time zones, in 15 USC 261 states, in part: the standard time of the first zone shall be based on the mean solar time of the sixtieth degree of longitude west from Greenwich... (and so on for each of the time zones) "based on" can mean a lot of different things. 15 USC 260a explicitly says that this time trumps any laws that the states may have on an official time (later sections allow certain states to opt in/out of daylight savings time, and define certain time zones). However, there's some weasil words in the next section, 16 USC 262, which seem to indciate that the actual legal time is determined by the govnerment: Within the respective zones created under the authority of sections 261 to 264 of this title the standard time of the zone shall insofar as practicable (as determined by the Secretary of Transportation) govern the movement of all common carriers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce. In all statutes, orders, rules, and regulations relating to the time of performance of any act by any officer or department of the United States, whether in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of the Government, or relating to the time within which any rights shall accrue or determine, or within which any act shall or shall not be performed by any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, it shall be understood and intended that the time shall insofar as practicable (as determined by the Secretary of Transportation) be the United States standard time of the zone within which the act is to be performed. The operative phrase being "as destermined by the Secretary of Transportation". It is up to this department of government to delegate the definition to someone. The time and frequency division of NIST have this delegation, and provide the official time. If they say that the time is a little fast or a little slow, it is still based on the solar mean time, but it isn't the solar mean time exactly. The US already doesn't observe exactly the solar mean time, but an approximation of it based on UTC, as recovered by NIST. I have not been able to find the actual regulations delegating this to NIST (only statements to that effect on the NIST web site), so I'm unable to tell how much deviation is allowed from the mean solar time to still meet the statuatory langauge of 'based on'. Clearly this can be as large as 0.9s, since that's the standard that's been adopted today. But who is to say that it can't be more than that and still be based on the mean time? Without looking at the actual current regulations that have been promulgated, it is hard to say, with certainty, that eliminating leap seconds would break legal time. I tried hard to find them, but alas couldn't. BTW, the 15 USC doesn't say anything at all about leapseconds or leap seconds. Maybe the politicians are the smart ones here :-) Warner _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts