UTC

Sixty Second Tech Episode 22
UTC

This is my first request from a reader, John, I hope you like it.

Coordinated Universal Time is one of the standards by which time is measured. Unless you are running a highly time sensitive application, UTC is the same things as Greenwich Mean Time, although there are subtle differences.

The abbreviation UTC stands for…compromise. The English name is Coordinated Universal Time whereas the French name is beyond my accurate pronunciation, but the abbreviation is TUC. Since both groups wanted the abbreviation to stand for their own version, a compromise was reached by using UTC, which technically stands for nothing.

Under UTC, most days contain 86400 seconds, however, to account for the slowing of the earth’s rotation, some days are given a leap second to keep UTC in sync with the solar time. (if you stand real still, you can feel it).

UTC notation is most often expressed using the Gregorian calendar. Time is expressed by not only the day, month, year, hours, minutes and seconds but also with a time zone. Times zones are expressed as a positive or negative number, at the end. A numeric time zone is the offset from UTC to derive local time. UTC is expressed as UTC+0, whereas US Central Time is UTC-6 or just -6.

UTC is also referred to as time zone Z or Zulu time.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.