Roughly speaking, this is the time zone formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The main difference is that GMT (or, more correctly, UT1) is based on the location of the Earth relative to the Sun, whereas UTC is an artificial timescale. UTC is however maintained to be within 1 s of UT1. Also, UTC is not subject to daylight savings adjustments.
In case you are wondering, the abbreviation is UTC because the French and English standards authorities could not agree on whether the abbreviation should be from the French version of the full name, “TUC”, or the English version, “CUT”; “UTC” was the compromise they reached.
See here for related information about the ANSI/ISO standard date format.
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This document last modified and © 2001-06-11 20:35:12 NZST