Local time in BRUSSELS - BELGIUM

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Brussels timezone information

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Originally this was apparent or true solar time, as shown by a sundial, and later it became mean solar time, as kept by most mechanical clocks.
Mean solar time has days of equal length, but the difference between mean and apparent solar time, called the equation of time, averages to zero over a year.
The use of local solar time became increasingly awkward as railways and telecommunications improved, because clocks differed between places by an amount corresponding to the difference in their geographical longitude, which was usually not a convenient number.
This problem could be solved by synchronizing the clocks in all localities of , but in many places the local time would then differ markedly from the solar time to which people were accustomed
Time zones are a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to approximate the mean solar time
There has been a general trend to set the boundaries of time zones west of their designated meridians in order to create a permanent daylight saving time effect
The increase in worldwide communication has further increased the need for interacting parties to communicate mutually comprehensible time references to one another
Thus, the advance of technology has both forced (rail transport) and enabled (modern timepieces) the development of arbitrary official "time."
Time zones are based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the mean solar time at longitude 0° (the Prime Meridian).
The definition of GMT was recently changed – it was previously the same as UT1, a mean solar time calculated directly from the rotation of the Earth.
As the rate of rotation of the Earth is not constant, the time derived from atomic clocks was adjusted to closely match UT1.
In January 1972, however, the length of the second in both Greenwich Mean Time and atomic time was equalised.
The readings of participating atomic clocks are averaged out to give a uniform time scale.
Because of the secular (long term) slowing down of the Earth's rotation leap seconds are periodically inserted into Greenwich Mean Time to make it approximate to UT1.
Because of the method of calculation this new time system is also called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Leap seconds are inserted to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of UT1.
In this way, local times (Brussels) continue to correspond approximately to mean solar time, while the effects of variations in Earth's rotation rate are confined to simple step changes that can be more easily applied to the uniform time scale (International Atomic Time or TAI).
All local times differ from TAI by an integral number of seconds.
With the implementation of UTC, nations began to use it in the definition of their time zones.
As of 2005, most but not all nations had altered the definition of local time in this way.