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The first thing you need to know so you don’t sound like a complete boob when speaking on the topic is that the “w” is silent. Even though it looks like “Green-which,” it is pronounced “Gren-itch.” It is for this reason, I think, that people refer to Greenwich Mean Time as “GMT”- because who wants to sound like a slack jawed yokel at that art gallery opening where such high topics of conversation will definitely present themselves? GMT is a rather confusing concept, but the way it came to exist out of necessity is a cool story: it’s based on our ability to perceive distance and time. GMT originally referred to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, which was created in 1675 with the express purpose of “perfecting the art of navigation” based on longitude. As the UK advanced in terms of both maritime transportation and, eventually, railway travel, a common reference point was needed to measure exactly when ships or trains were to arrive or depart. |
Though the UK had been using it for an extensive period of time prior, GMT was established as the worldwide way to measure time at the international Meridian Conference in 1884. Time needs a reference point to be functional and to put people in different physical locations on the same page. Because of its geographic location at essentially the center of the earth (in the northern hemisphere), it was decided to place the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, England, though it had functioned in that capacity unofficially for years.
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This made Greenwich the “zero” point in terms of longitude on the globe and the Prime Meridian. The Prime Meridian functions in the same manner as the Equator does for the northern and southern hemispheres; it essentially splits the world in half in a vertical manner. Because the daily rotation of the earth is somewhat irregular due to the curvature of the earth and the varied speed of the individual trains or ships heading toward their destinations, the standard “time” became different. The speed and location of these trains actually changed the way time was measured and functioned - time became recognized as subjective and variable based on location and speed. Hence, GMT became the one baseline for all travelers, regardless of their location. |
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So what does longitude have to do with measuring time? Noon GMT time was meant to be (yet rarely is, thanks to the earth’s uneven spin, orbit, and angle) the exact moment when the sun crosses the prime meridian at Greenwich and reaches its highest point in the sky, hence the term “high noon.” Since the sun doesn’t always hit the meridian at exactly noon every day, it is taken as a “mean” (or average), which is why it is called Greenwich Mean Time and not simply Greenwich Time.
And that is why all earthly time was (it’s been replaced by Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC) measured at Greenwich and how “GMT” was born.
And now, as we are exhausted by this exercise of heavy thinking, we declare that according to our personal interpretation of GMT, it is officially happy hour. Cheers!
