October 13, 1884 (Jiashen August 25), Greenwich the international Standard Time the birth. the

1884 years, representatives of international astronomers meeting decided to go through the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian, as the starting point for calculating longitude, the world standard "time zone" starting point. October 13, GMT was adopted as the international standard time was born "target =" _blank "> standard time formulation of
Greenwich Mean Time: November 24, 1858 related to a dispute with the British case, Dorset, England clock refers man to two minutes after 10:06, a judge of the county's decision a draw land litigation against him, because he did not have time to appear in court hearing in 10:00. court, he pointed out to the judge, his hometown Ken Bolan County of Cameroon to ear town train station clock arrive case must therefore be a retrial. train station and court time difference, prompting the British government to unify time .
In addition, Britain is a maritime industry is very developed countries, whether accurate timing for Voyager, is a matter of life and death. because there is no accurate timing tool, you can not know the location of the vessels sailing in the ocean and time the vessel is at sea, from the latitude and longitude to calculate the position it in a long time, the Voyager is just speculation Longitude their sailing experience to determine the course, if wrong, the vessel will be taking the wrong course, or even aground or running aground, such accidents are not uncommon in the history of navigation in 1707, a British fleet led by Sir Claudio Presley measured wrong Longitude crash, so that the four ships were destroyed, more than two thousand people died in the belly of the fish is to solve the problem of determination of sailing longitude, as early as in 1675, King Charles II ordered the construction of the Hong Kong Observatory in Greenwich Village, southeast of London Thames astronomers After more than 100 years of efforts, the timing finally worked out a set of scientific method, and designated by the meridian of the observatory as geographical longitude measurement and the starting point of the timing system. sailing around the world, as long as the meridian of Greenwich Observatory as a starting point, the voyage will be able to accurately measure their vessels to the correct location and time The Greenwich Observatory scientific research, has contributed to the prosperity of the maritime shipping industry to avoid sailing accident.
when the Greenwich Observatory to determine its own meridian, some countries in the world according to the geographical conditions of the country, but also to determine its own meridian This is likely to cause confusion. To solve this problem, October 13, 1884, (history com) on behalf of 20 countries in Washington meeting, (history. cn) unified International Standard Time and uniform radial problems made a resolution: "The meeting recommended to the Governments of participating countries will be required through the Greenwich Observatory meridian instrument center meridian longitude of the prime meridian." So the world recognized by the meridian of Greenwich Observatory prime meridian, the starting point as the starting point for calculating longitude and the world "time zone", the international standard time in Greenwich was born
GMT time scale of the Earth since turned based, later it was discovered that the Earth's rotation gradually slow down the trend and seasonal changes and sudden irregular changes in late 1979 on the World Administrative Radio Conference in Geneva adopted a resolution, to determine with "Coordinated Universal Time" to replace GMT as the time of international standards in the field of radio communications. development, reflects the rapid development of science and technology in the world today.