Greenwich Main Time

Time is a strange thing, as Pink Floyd already remarked in their song with that very title. The moments come and as you still try to hold them they’ve become only memories already. No-one has ever been able to conserve time, not even a single millisecond.


Some egg-heads once thought a couple of decades ago that you might save some energy by setting all clocks forward one hour in spring just to set them backwards again in autumn. Normally these time-jumps result in rising accident-rates the day after the collective clock-setting, but no-one has ever been able to count the saved energy.


Another funny thing about time is that we don’t seem to have the same time all over the world. In Zurich it might be 9 in the morning when I pour my second cup of tea at work, while in Vancouver people are just laying down for sleep. Or in Singapore the masses are heading home from their job.


But now scientists in Switzerland have come up with an idea to really save energy by re-setting the clock. Energy that’s uselessly wasted for calculations concerning different time-zones. The thought was: Why can’t Switzerland being the country with the most accurate watches and clocks be the zero-point of time?

That would make it easier to calculate different times in the world, e.g. for communicating with Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo or Vancouver. Being in the time-zone of Central Europe you first have to look up the time-difference between Greenwich in England and the desired destination-time, and then add or subtract on hour, depending in which direction the destination is. So if Switzerland was on Greenwich Main Time this adding or subtracting wouldn’t be necessary and would save just a little bit of energy.

And now this: Our beloved federal government has decided to connect Switzerland to Greenwich Main Time! In order to avoid another wave of accidents this time-switch will take effect on Easter Sunday, since Monday is public holiday in Switzerland. What seems to be a rash decision was actually planned for a long time. Just to give you an example: Microsoft has already announced that there will be updates for both Windows XP and Vista, where the Swiss capital Bern is mentioned along with Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon and London. And of course these updates will be available from Sunday, 8 April, in all four languages of Switzerland – German, French, Italian and for Vista also in Rumantsch – and in English.

So, just one week after the ‘regular’ switch to summertime we will have another switch to Greenwich Main Time over the Easter Weekend, which will give us back the hour they took last weekend.

Good for all Easter Bunnies in Switzerland: They can sleep one hour longer this year before they have to hide all the Easter Eggs.