Oxford is 51° 44' 60" N, 1° 15' 24" W. So Oxford Time is 5 minutes and 2 seconds behind Greenwich Time. At 9.05pm (9.00pm "Oxford Time") every evening Great Tom, Christ Church College's famous bell, rings out 101 times. This dates from the foundation of the college when the bell rang once for each of the college's original 101 students, in order to tell them to return to the college before the gates were locked. The bell then remains silent until 8am the next morning when it returns to striking every hour, on the hour (Greenwich Time) until 9pm in the evening.
I think all the ancient civilisations had some time-measuring technology - water clocks, candles, sundials etc.
and the division of the day and night into 12 hours each goes back a long way - apparently to ancient Egypt.
But of course the length of the day and night varies according to the seasons, even in Egypt,
much more in parts of the world nearer the poles.
It seems the Egyptians got over this by having 10 equal hours that could be measured by water-clocks,
with two variable hours of twilight each morning and evening.
The 'hours' mentioned in the Bible (e.g. in the account of the Passion) would have been one twelfth of the time from sunrise to sunset,
and the liturgical hours of the medieval monastic day and night were likewise variable.
It was only when chronometers were invented so sailors could determine longtitude
that the need for strictly fixed-length units became over-riding,
and only when railways began to cross the land did nations find a need to regularise their time-zones.
Makes sense, I suppose. Anything else is just quackery.
Barb! Get out of that bikini now!
