英语听力文摘 English Digest 658 为何要确立格林威治标准时间？

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　　Imagine getting on a train at twelve noon and heading out on a four-hour trip to another town.

　　You’d expect to arrive at four o’clock in the afternoon, right? But before the last few decades of the 19th century, there was no guarantee that this would happen, and it usually had little to do with slow trains or drunken conductors.

　　Until the end of the 19th century virtually every town across the world kept time according to its own methods, creating problems for industries such as railroads that relied on precise timing¹ to deliver goods.

　　How To Control The Chaos²

　　To bring order to this chaos, a conference was held in Washington, D.C. in 1884. Delegates from around the world designated Greenwich, England as the starting point from which to create international time zones.

　　But why was this small, London suburb chosen to create what became known as Greenwich Standard Time?

　　GST?

　　Over 100 years before the Washington conference, King George II of England designated Greenwich as zero degrees longitude³ in order to help stabilize⁴ the shipping⁵ trade. If you look at a globe of the earth you’ll see that the vertical⁶ line marked ‘zero’ that runs from the North to the South Pole- zero degrees longitude–runs directly through Greenwich.

　　By the time of the Washington conference many shippers already used the longitude system to keep time when traveling by sea. It was only natural for most countries to adopt this system as the basis for creating standard time for the entire planet.

　　Based on longitude increments⁷ of fifteen degrees, time becomes one hour earlier each longitude west of Greenwich, and one hour later each longitude east of Greenwich. In other words, when it’s twelve noon at zero degrees longitude, it’s one o’clock at fifteen longitude east.

　　为什么要确立格林威治标准时间？

　　设想一下：您正乘坐一辆中午12点整出发的火车前往另外一个城市，路途耗费4个小时。

　　你肯定期望在下午四点能够准时到达，对吧？ 但是，在19世纪末之前，保障准确的抵达时间是基本不可能的，并且这与晚点或醉酒的列车长几乎毫无关系。

　　实际上，直到19世纪末为止， 几乎世界上每个城市都有自己记录时间的方式，这就给需要精确定时发送货物的行业，如铁路运输业等带来无尽的麻烦。

　　怎样控制混乱的时间

　　为了让混乱的时间变得有序，各国代表于1884年在华盛顿特区召开了一次会议。代表们指定英国格林威治作为创建国际时区的起点。

　　为什么这个伦敦郊区小镇会被选定并创建格林威治标准时间呢？

　　格林威治标准时间？

　　在华盛顿会议100多年以前，英国国王乔治二世为了稳定航运业，曾将格林威治标为0度经线所在地。如果你看一下地球仪，你可以看到联通南北极的零度经线正好穿过格林威治。

　　在华盛顿会议召开之时，需要船公司在海运过程中已经使用经度系统来掌控时间。大多数国家自然就容易接受使用这一系统作为确认全球标准时间的基础。

　　以每增加经度15度为基准，格林威治每往西一个时区时间便减少一个小时，而每往东一个时区则增加一个小时。换句话说，当零度经线处是中午十二点时，东经15度处便是下午1点。

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