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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Sun time vs clock time

An interesting tidbit I have done absolutely nothing to follow up on:
It's the season again to re-live de Gaulle's call for the French to resist the Nazis, an annual week of reminiscence and reviewing of newsreels. In last night's news footage they showed the Germans resetting clocks all over occupied Paris. France had been on the same time as England; now they changed to the same time as Germany.
And they never changed back.
It's kind of anomalous, to be directly south of Greenwich and yet not to be in the same time zone. It's nice - the summer evenings stretch out until after 10, and even in winter night is staved off until after 5 (at the expense of morning light, but it's a good trade). But it's strange to think of it as a bit of the Occupation that stayed on.

2 comments:

Reya Mellicker said...

Time zones are completely arbitrary. Time itself? Not the carefully controlled and measured dimension it's supposed to be.

What a story ... about time in France. Didn't know that. Thanks.

shabby girl said...

An interesting little history lesson! I like the idea of light until 10:00 in the summer, and yet still have light until 5:00 in the winter.