Talk:Indian Standard Time/Archive 1

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• Do we call that 82 degree 30 minutes longitude the Indian Prime meridian?

I haven't heard of this term in this reference, though I am not sure. AshishG^talk 02:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• Do we also call Irish Standard Time "IST"?

I guess so. Its up to Irish to decide ;) AshishG^talk 02:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Changing time on aircraft

Is it really required to change time on an aircraft for a mere half hour, when it is only flying over another country?

Of course no. What I meant was was more of theoritical and logical issue. But if someone takes a break in Bangladesh, then s/he would have technical discrepency as in moving in same direction would require time to move back-and-forth. May be I should reword the sentence. AshishG^talk 02:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

This article says that Mirzapur is the city on wich IST is based. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1501252.stm)

Edit comments

Replying to some of the embedded comments:

• However Calcutta time was officially maintained as a separate time zone until 1948 -- the source mentions that is was maintained as a separate time zone. The reason why is not mentioned.
• ...corresponding to a single time zone for the country at 5 hours and 30 minutes in advance of GMT. -- said already, although without the numbers

  I think it should be fine

• "all was well" -- Meaning of quote a little unclear

  Copied verbatim from the source. Delving into the meaning could mean original research

• 21 seconds..

  it seems odd, but that's what the source says

• said already, although without the numbers
• It should be ok to mention it again

=Nichalp «Talk»= 15:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

• "All was well"—I think that if it's going to be included, it shouldn't create confusion in the readers. I don't think it would be original research—just research.
• "21 seconds"—The spirit of the MoS would be served by uniform exactitude here, just as with decimal points. Why not remove the 21 seconds? Looks odd. (Unless there's an interesting historical reason that can be explicated.)
• I think abbreviations shouldn't clutter the text unless they're going to be used again in the article, at least once. (Or, on rare occasions, where it's really important to display a well-known initialism.) Tony 02:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

  What do you suggest on the "all is well". Should the the quotes be removed?

  I'd prefer we leave the seconds in place to maintain the accuracy of the local time. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

IST

The article is on the time zone, which is more recognised than the general purpose article "Time in India". Please discuss any moves before implimenting them. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

GA Review

I have passed the article for GA status following a review of the article's merit against Good Article Criteria.
1. It is well written. - Pass

• Well written with compelling prose and no glaring violations of WP:MOS. All technical or cultural jargon is either adequately explained in the article or wiki-linked.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable. - Pass

• Excellent job of utilizing reliable sources to source all needed claims.

3. It is broad in its coverage. - Pass

• I appreciate the fine balance between keeping this article focused on the IST standard versus the broader context of Time in India. For GA consideration, I think the article mainains an adequate scope and does a considerably good job at informing the reader of the relevant aspects needed to understand the IST standard.
• For FA consideration I would consider fleshed out more details about the economic and cultural implication of adhering to the standard has. I would also expand the See Also and External Links section.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy - Pass

• The article maintains a NPOV tone with consideration of the reasonings for IST's implemention and makes mention of conflicts.
• For FA consideration I would like to see the Problems section expanded with more detail about the conflict and proposed alernatives.

5. It is stable - Weak Pass

• There has been some signifigant additions since the article was brought up for GA consideration but nothing that I would consider drastic or "unstable".

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic. - Pass

• In addition to maps, the editors have done an excellent job of finding other images to help conceptualize the article's content.

I want to commend the editors of this article for doing an terrific job in crafting this Good Article. I encourage the editors to focus on some of the areas I mention above and continue pushing this article up to FA status. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Agne 04:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Trivia section

I have removed the Trivia section as it is not recommended for FAs. For works on trivia, please use this article instead. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 08:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Vedic Reference

The article uses the terms "Prime Meridian" or and "zero longitude" in reference to the Vedas. That assumes that they had a model of a spherical earth in the Vedas, which is problematic. Note that, when the earth is flat every location has the same time, unless you assume that the sun travels parallel to the flat earth, which gets you into all kinds of other complexities. I don't know anything about the Vedic reference, but using "prime meridian" or "zero longitude" seems problematic. It took a lot of work by a lot of people, before the concept of "longitude" was clarified (and the solution escaped Newton). See: Sobel, Dava, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC) Corrected Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:10, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

We have just used the source and quoted it verbatim. Going verbatim, there shouldn't be much problem as even before Prime Meridian was defined, the definition of Meridian said that it refers to: "an imaginary great circle on the celestial sphere that passes through the zenith and the north point on the horizon. It passes through the north point on the horizon, through the celestial pole, up to the zenith, and through the south point on the horizon and is perpendicular to the local horizon." Even if it was not known that earth was round, it would still be possible to construct a line (straight) that goes from north to south, and use it to classify time for other meridian. The use of word "longitude" may be wrong. Actually, the use of "meridian" is more faulty linguistically as it refers to mid-day, while in India, time was characterized by sunrise. On the same grounds, it is even wrong to use this word for current meridians, as they are used to define mid-night, rather than noon. If you have any suggestions how we should handle this (without introducing OR), please suggest. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 03:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I did a web search and what I found was that there was indeed a concept of "prime meridian" and it (approximately) passed through Ujjain. However, it was not a Vedic concept, but from a astronomical treatise called "Surya Siddhanta" written between 300 and 500AD. I have a good source for it, which I am including in the article. Since I have a subscriptions to JSTOR (a scientific journal on-line service), the source may or may not be available freely, but it does explain clearly how the term "prime meridian" is used. So, here are my suggestions:

• I will take out the www.indiatravelouge.com reference. (Entirely possible, it is written by a journalist who didn't understand the full implications of their statements.)
• Will substitute the JSTOR reference.
• I will skim through the JSTOR reference and (to the extent I understand it) add a brief, (nonmathematical) summation of what they say. How does that sound?

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I learned something. Apparently, by the 2nd or 3rd century ACE astronomers in both Greece and India believed that the earth was spherical. (The Ptolomian system is based on a spherical earth.) And some of the Indian mathematician/astronomers like Aryabhatta, Brahmadatta, and Viramahira computed the diameter and circumference of the earth which is pretty close to the modern value. I was reading Burgess's translation of the Surya Siddhanta and they even tell you (a) how to figure out whether you are east or west of the prime meridian and (b) your actual distance to the prime meridian along a line of constant latitude. The method of computing longitude depended on the local time during a lunar eclipse. So, it isn't something you can compute in a hurry, but nonetheless, very clever. I've included a little quote from the Surya Siddhanta discribing the prime meridian in the main article. I hope that will be OK. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ambuj and Nichalp (and other editors), I thought I'd summarize what I have done in the History (ancient India) section. Here goes.

• I replaced the old references with more reliable academic references. However, the web links for some of them may not be universally accessible. (Might require an individual or institutional subscription). I have given the journal citations though.
• I have added two sold references from the Surya Siddhanta and the Aryabhatiya which define the prime meridian, the sunrise at Ujjain, and the division of time.
• I threw out the earlier description of time with minimum 0.0006 seconds. The reason for it is that, while theoretically they could define smaller and smaller units of time, they obviously had no way of measuring time to that accuracy. (With all the modern instruments available today, the world record for 100 meters is measured only up to the second decimal: 9.76 seconds.) I've replaced it with more practical units.

Hope what I've added is not too long.

Finally, this was fun. I learned something. I was aimlessly surfing WP, when I happened upon Indian Standard Time ... Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)