[time-nuts] French Time offset

[Lux, James P]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com 
> [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Louis Oneto
> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 10:14 AM
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] French Time offset
> 
> BIPM is an _international_ organisation, and apart to be in 
> France, has nothing to do (and never had as far as I know) 
> with the definition of French legal time. At least no more 
> than for any other country UTC (or TAI) based.
> Jean-Louis
> >
> > Paris is at 2degrees 20 min longitude, which isn't enough 
> to account 
> > for
> > 12.5 minutes.  Sevres (where BIPM is) is actually a bit to 
> the west, 
> > so even less solar time difference.


Just casting about for potential meridian locations that might explain the 12.5 minute difference. Maybe the central longitude of France is 12.5 minutes(of time, 3 1/8th degrees of longitude) from Greenwich? (like India's time zone being on the half hour). Things get done for funny reasons: After all, the physical size of France is why ATM "cells" (packets) are 53 bytes (48 byte payload) instead of either 32 byte or 64 byte payloads.