h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Were the French involved in this? Normally Universal Coordinated Time would have the three letter acronym UCT. I know the French put their adjectives after the noun. Is this tla from a French root?

Sorry I took so long to reply, I forgot to subscribe to the conversations about my own entry.

The management of UTC is run from France, so I suspect they were involved from the start, although I don't know exactly how UTC "translates" to Universal Coordinated Time (which you would expect to be UCT ).

I'll do some digging and if I get a result, post it here.

o.k. some more information.

UTC is managed by the International Earth Rotation and reference System Service (IERS) who has a "Central Board" currently located in Germany, a "Directing Board" whose current chairman appears to be based in the U.S. but who have a large concentration of resources in Europe.

According to their web site
http://www.iers.org/MainDisp.csl?pid=101-189

the acronym UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time or, in French Temps Universel Coordonne,

According to James S Huggins Refrigerator Door at
http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/internettime.htm

So, why, you ask, is Coordinated Universal Time abbreviated UTC? Some wanted to use the English word order (CUT). Others wanted to use the French word order (TUC). But, sometimes in international standards, compromise is necessary. UTC was chosen as a compromise.

(In answer to your next question as to what level of authority does James S Huggins have to answer the question we are asking, the answer is simple, his web site came back as the result of a Google search in an effort to find out the answer.)

I'm glad we were able to learn so much from my question. In brief, then it is not an acronym of anything really!