Mike:

Back to your original inquiry...

EDT is the short form of EDST which stands for "Eastern Daylight Savings Time" which is that period between the first week in April and the first week in October of each year in which most clocks in the US are advanced one hour. In October, clocks are set back one hour to "Standard Time".

I think in UK the summer time clock is Daylight Savings Time or DST. It used to be BST, British Summer Time until the rest of Europe got into the act. In WWII there was even a period of British Double Summer Time to use as much of the existing daulight as possible for war production.

We have four time zones in the mainland US - from east to west: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. Alaska also has four zones, but I don't remeber their names. Hawaii and Puerto Rico have their own zones -- don't know these either.

Anyway each of these zones has Standard Time and Daylight [Savings] Time. Eastern Daylight [Savings] Time is now abreviated EDT rather than EDST because several federal government agencies did not leave enough room in their computers for EDST and thought EDT would do the trick. It was EDST for at least twenty years, though -- pre-computing era (or PCE)

Keep in mind, however, that not everyone in the US actually switches from Standard to Daylight Savings Time and back again. Most localities do, but it is on a State by State and locality by locality. You may be in Mountain Daylight [Savings] Time while the guy across your back alley is in Mountain Standard Time. And, of course, there are the diehard individualists that keep their own time irrespective of what the government wants to do. So in much of the Western U S, if someone tells you the time -- you'd best find out what time zone he thinks he in. Some of the folks out here are not in any Earthly time zone at all.

It's even more confusing if you live near a time zone boundary. I know one rancher in western Nebraska whose ranch is almost evenly divided between Central and Mountain times. He can each lunch at noon, then walk to the barn and eat another lunch at noon in the Central zone.

All of this confusion arises from our wonderful federal form of government. Ain't it grand? Don't you guys in Canada have the same kinds of problems -- maybe worse. Aren't some of the nothern areas rather resistant to time changes dictated by Ottawa?

Regards,

JME