Bombay Time!

Had a lot of spare time at work today (as usual), so was browsing various articles online (as usual, again!). I made a fascinating discovery.

Now, of course, Bombayites get the benefit of 40 minutes of daylight saving, since local time is behind the standard time, resulting in relatively late sunrises and sunsets. Once upon a time though, Bombay time was actually 40 minutes behind IST. Bombay had its own time zone, separate from that of the rest of India, for about half-a-century from 1905 to 1955! [I assume that Bombay here refers to Bombay Presidency of British India and Bombay state of independent India, rather than to the city].

The story is very interesting, and related here.

Further clicking brought me to the Project Gutenberg website, where this document seems to show that "Bombay Time" was one of the originally designated time zones when these were created in a global accord in the 1880s (search "Bombay" in the linked url). And Bombay was the only city that had an entire time zone named after it. Good ego-stroking for these less glorious days!