Calcutta Time was one of the two official

time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...

s established in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

in 1884. It was established during the

International Meridian Conference The International Meridian Conference was a conference held in October 1884 in Washington, D.C., in the United States, to determine a prime meridian for international use. The conference was held at the request of President of the United State ...

held at Washington, D.C. in the United States. It was decided that India had two time zones: Calcutta (now Kolkata) would use the 90th meridian east and Bombay (now Mumbai) the 75th meridian east. It was determined as 5 hours, 53 minutes and 20 seconds ahead of

Greenwich Mean Time Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the local mean time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being ...

(UTC+5:53:20). Calcutta Time was described as being 23 minutes and 20 second ahead of

Indian standard time Indian Standard Time (IST), sometimes also called India Standard Time, is the time zone observed throughout the Republic of India, with a time offset of UTC+05:30. India does not observe daylight saving time or other seasonal adjustments. I ...

and one hour, two minutes and 20 seconds ahead of Bombay Time. It has also been described as 32 minutes and 6 seconds ahead of Madras Time (UTC+5:21:14). Even when

Indian Standard Time Indian Standard Time (IST), sometimes also called India Standard Time, is the time zone observed throughout the Republic of India, with a time offset of UTC+05:30. India does not observe daylight saving time or other seasonal adjustments. I ...

(IST) was adopted on 1 January 1906, Calcutta Time remained in effect until 1948 when it was abandoned in favour of IST. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Calcutta Time was the dominant time of the Indian part of the British empire with records of astronomical and geological events recorded in it. Willian Strachey, an uncle of

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...

was said to have visited Calcutta once and then "kept his own watch set resolutely to Calcutta Time, organizing the remaining fifty-six years of his life accordingly".

James Clavell James Clavell (born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell; 10 October 1921 – 7 September 1994) was a British and American writer, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. Clavell is best known for his ''Asian Saga'' nov ...

, in his novel '' King Rat'', refers to news broadcasts as occurring in "Calcutta Time".

References

* Time in India Time zones History of Kolkata 1884 establishments in India 1948 disestablishments in India {{India-stub

See also

References