[wongarsu]

I would argue Portugal is the one in the "wrong" timezone here.

If you want the sun to be at its high point at noon, Spain is obviously in the wrong time zone. But you see plenty of countries around the world choosing a slightly different timezone to facilitate trade and communication with some other country (or within itself, in the case of larger countries). With most other barriers to trade gone within the eurozone having to convert timezones is a significant inconvinience that (in the mind of many) outweighs having the sun in slightly the wrong place.

[allannienhuis]

Why would you want the sun to be at it's high point at noon?

Perhaps that has value in an agricultural society, but in today's world I'd much rather have more daylight in my leisure hours (evening) than my working hours.

[throw0101a]

> Why would you want the sun to be at it's high point at noon?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

Nothing wrong with wanting sunlight during after-work activities, but are there biological consequences to all of this clock fiddling? (Not arguing for/against, just spit-balling a hypothesis.)

[tzs]

Biologically, the optimum would probably be more time fiddling, adjusting the clocks daily so that sunrise is at the same time every day. That would sync the clocks to one of the most important environmental factors that sets circadian rhythms.

Offhand, I can't think of any biological significance to noon. Noon's charms for timekeeping are technological.

1. It is easy for everyone in a given area to agree on noon. It happens with the Sun high in the sky, as opposed to sunrise which is obscured for many be trees, hills, and buildings.

2. The interval from noon to the next noon is constant [1]. The sunrise to sunrise interval varies considerably. Make a good mechanical clock and sync it to noon, and it can run a long time without getting too far out of sync. With time based on sunrise, you'd need to adjust the clock everyday, or make the clock more complicated to have it know about the variation.

[1] well...maybe not to people with very precise clocks, but it is constant as far as the needs of most people most of the time goes.

[logfromblammo]

Because that's the literal definition of local noon.

That has value in any society that values precise measurements of physical observations.

A purposefully inaccurate time zone is the equivalent of changing the length of the meter to make your daily commute less distance in the winter and more distance in the summer, or to make the meterstick longer all year just so you don't have to drive as many meters every day. It's ridiculous for distance, so why do we do it with time?

Business hours are almost entirely arbitrary anyway. Change them instead.

[oarsinsync]

Solar noon and local noon are different things, unfortunately.

Changing an offset isn't quite the same thing as changing the measure of a unit. Seconds, minutes and hours are not being adjusted as part of this. It would be more like starting to count from 1 metre instead of 0 metres to adjust the length of your commute.

> Business hours are almost entirely arbitrary anyway. Change them instead.

As it happens, a sibling comment has already pointed out that people have effectively done this. The time of day you eat lunch is arbitrary. So the lunch hour in Spain is 14:00 instead of 13:00, effectively resolving the 'wrong hour' issue.

[allannienhuis]

> because that's the literal definition of local noon.

Fair enough. I was (of course?) using the term to mean 12:00pm which I think is what most people think of when thinking of 'noon'.

Most people have approximately zero reasons to care about when the sun is at it's peak in the sky. Valuing precise measurements of physical observations doesn't make any difference to that in any way I'm aware of.

The sunrise and sunset times have much larger implications on our activities, so why not optimise for those times? I get that any solution won't be optimal for everyone, but it's reasonable to try to optimise for the majority of people where you can.

[qalmakka]

Spain was in GMT/UTC+0 until march 1940, when Franco's desire to align the country with Axis powers led him to change the clocks to CET. France was in GMT (as it is obvious given that its right below the UK) until the same year, when it was moved into German time following the Nazi invasion.

[jvzr]

Didn't know that. TIL. Thank you!