> These are the people for whom adjudicating upon such matters as France’s attempted move to the decimal system and the International Atomic Agency’s periodic decision to add nuclear seconds to the world time system are the bread and butter that they grapple with at work every day.
I believe the author is referring to leap seconds? International Atomic Agency is I think jumbling up the International Atomic Energy Agency and International Atomic Time. The agency responsible for leap seconds is the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS); the IAEA is not involved in timekeeping standards as far as I know.
just as an aside, he's separately and also referring to the deal between UK and France where the French agreed to accept Greenwich being the Prime Meridian in exchange for the UK adopting the metric system.
The importance of the meridians was determined by the publications, e.g. nautical almanacs, which were issued by the astronomical observatories located on those meridians.
Prior to the establishment of a unique origin for meridians, the navigators were divided in those who used nautical almanacs from the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, those who used nautical almanacs from the "Observatoire de Paris" and so on, for almanacs from other less important observatories.
All observatories published coordinates based on their own meridian (which was precisely where their meridian telescope was located).
I believe the author is referring to leap seconds? International Atomic Agency is I think jumbling up the International Atomic Energy Agency and International Atomic Time. The agency responsible for leap seconds is the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS); the IAEA is not involved in timekeeping standards as far as I know.