Prof. D. P. Sen Gupta
Visiting Professor School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), IISc, Bangalore

The History of Time, Time keeping and Indian Standard Time

Abstract:

Why should a day and night be divided into 24 hours, and an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds? How did people keep track of time in ancient times? What were the devices used? If the device depended on shadows cast by the Sun, how was time measured at night? What is geography of time? How did the Industrial revolution change local time into standard Time? What are time zones?  What is the story of Indian Standard Time? It is often proposed that India be divided into two time zones. Is that what we should do? Why should we not go for winter time, summer time as is done in the US or in other western countries? Our proposal is to do neither but advance IST by half an hour to 6 hours ahead of GMT. With IST as 5½ hours ahead of GMT, we belong to only 3% of nations in the world to have a fractional shift in time. Why not make it 6 hours once and for all, be among 97% of nations in the world and in the bargain save nearly 3 billion units of electricity every year? How can one calculate this? Are there other benefits?

About the speaker:

Prof. Sen Gupta is presently Visiting Professor, School of Natural and Engineering Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. He is an Honours graduate in Physics from Presidency College, Calcutta and in Electrical Engineering from I.I.T, Kharagpur. He received his Ph.D. from Liverpool University where he taught for five years before he joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He carried out teaching and research for about three decades at IISc Bangalore. His research on Small Oscillations in Power Systems culminated in the development of an Adaptive stabilizer. He devoted much of his time studying rural electrification problems. The IISc proposal made in 1977 of “One hut one bulb” in rural homes is believed to be the precursor to the Bhagyajyothi scheme that started in Karnataka State. IISc also produced the “Computer aided system improvement programme’ for voltage improvement and loss minimization in rural networks. His recent research involves, “Advancement of Indian Standard Time” and the use of Solar and Wind Energy in reducing Load shedding in Karnataka State.

He has received awards for teaching excellence at both Liverpool University and IISc where he was awarded a special chair for Energy Studies. He had research collaborations with a number of British Universities, particularly with the University of Liverpool and Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.  He has co-authored books published by Butterworths, McMillan, Alpha International, London and recently by IISc Press and World Scientific. He has published a number of books for children, both in English and in Bengali