“The most fundamental unit of time-measurement is in most societies the period of the earth’s rotation on its axis, which is normally known as the day.” (p1) However, the perception of time and its discussion in language varies across different societies, and the way in which we explain it may change. The most common way in which we describe the passing of the Earth’s rotation in English is as a day, however, we still use the ” word ‘fortnight’, meaning 14 nights” (p1) which we take from Celtic and Germanic cultures.
We record time, through the progression of the sun. We use it to measure our ‘day’ and its absence measures our ‘night’. We can then use its position in the sky to determine the time, as well as the season. Going beyond this days and nights and seasons can be divided into some form of calendar, both the one we are familiar with, as well as more ancient ones, such as that of the Egyptians, which divided a day into 12 hours of light, and 12 hours of darkness, and grouped days into 36 Decans (groups of ten days) which formed the basis of the year. While this may not seem critically relevant to my study of time, it is highly important to know that all our measures of time are based on the Sun (or the Earth’s rotation). The sun and the stars could be an interesting subject matter, or just clarify what it is we talk about when we examine ‘time’.
Because the Earth’s orbit is elliptical and it is inclined in its orbit, it is sometimes closer, or further from the sun, creating different seasons and the equinox. This results in differences between the hours of a day which the sun shows us, and that which we experience on clocks. (p9) This difference could be played upon or investigated through imagery, as it is the basis for what we refer to as the ‘shortest day’ which in fact is not based on just the amount of hours the sun is in the sky, but, according to a sundial, that day is in-fact half an hour shorter than on the longest day. (p9)
GMT was devised in order to synchronise time across Britain. It was important particularly to the railways and the communications industry. As time is perceived differently from different points of the Earth, a standard was required as relying only on the sun it is likely “that a telegraph message transmitted from east to west should appear to arrive before it had been sent.”(p11)