Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

uses

Central European Time Central European Time (CET) is a standard time of Central, and parts of Western Europe, which is one hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The UTC offset, time offset from UTC can be written as UTC+01:00. It is used in most parts of Eur ...

(CET) during the winter as

standard time Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...

, which is one hour ahead of

Coordinated Universal Time Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communicat ...

( UTC+01:00), and

Central European Summer Time Central European Summer Time (CEST, UTC+02:00), sometimes referred to as Central European Daylight Time (CEDT), is the standard clock time observed during the period of summer daylight-saving in those European countries which observe Central E ...

(CEST) during the summer as

daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, ...

, which is two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC+02:00).

History

The

electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphy is point-to-point distance communicating via sending electric signals over wire, a system primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most wid ...

was introduced in Switzerland in 1851, which allowed near real-time communication, especially amongst

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

s. By July 1853, all telegraph and post offices across Switzerland were using Bernese time, a

local mean time Local mean time (LMT) is a form of solar time that corrects the variations of local apparent time, forming a uniform time scale at a specific longitude. This measurement of time was used for everyday use during the 19th century before time zones ...

measured from the Zytglogge clocktower at UTC+00:29:45.5. Bernese time was also used on train timetables by at least 1873. On 1 June 1894, UTC+01:00 was officially adopted nationwide.

Daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, ...

was first attempted between 1941 and 1942, by moving the clocks forward one hour at 01:00 on the first Monday in May, and back again at 02:00 on the first Monday in October. The decision to observe daylight saving time was made by the Federal Council on behalf of the recommendation of the Federal Chancellery. Whilst DST was introduced in much of

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

in the spring of 1980, Switzerland did not implement DST until the following year due to popular opposition as expressed by a referendum in 1978. This resulted in there being a one-hour time difference between Switzerland and most of Western Europe, including all of the bordering countries (with the exception of

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (, ; ; ), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein ( ), is a Landlocked country#Doubly landlocked, doubly landlocked Swiss Standard German, German-speaking microstate in the Central European Alps, between Austria in the east ...

) for around six months in 1980. The German village of Büsingen am Hochrhein, a small exclave, entirely surrounded by Swiss territory, did not implement DST in 1980 either and observed the same time as Switzerland, meaning there was a one-hour time difference between this village and the rest of

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The zone Europe/Busingen was created in the 2013a release of the tz database, because since the

Unix time Unix time is a date and time representation widely used in computing. It measures time by the number of non-leap seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time, UTC on 1 January 1970, the Unix Epoch (computing), epoc ...

epoch in 1970, Büsingen has shared clocks with

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

. Since 1981 the shifts to DST occur on the date as specified for

European Summer Time Summer time in Europe is the variation of standard clock time that is applied in most European countries (apart from Iceland, Belarus, Turkey and Russia) in the period between spring and autumn, during which clocks are advanced by one hour from t ...

Solar time

The difference of longitude between the western and easternmost points of Switzerland is equivalent to 4°32′09", resulting in a difference of approximately 18 minutes of solar time.

IANA time zone database

The IANA time zone database contains one zone for Switzerland in the file zone.tab, named Europe/Zurich. Columns marked with * are the columns from zone.tab itself. Computers not supporting "Europe/Zurich" may use the older POSIX syntax: TZ='CET-1CEST,M3.5.0/2,M10.5.0/3'

References

Notes

External links

Time in Switzerland
at ''

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History 20th century Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen Wheeler, Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 19 ...

'' {{Europe topic, Time in Geography of Switzerland