EST

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Thu, 11 Jan 2001 09:44:25 +1100
    From:        Alex LIVINGSTON <alex at agsm.edu.au>
    Message-ID:  <a04330100b68292dc0db1@[149.171.217.233]>

  | And it's not just because "S" 
  | stands for "standard" in the former case and "Summer" in the latter: 
  | it stands for "standard" in both cases! Sometimes I'm ashamed to be 
  | Australian.

In Victoria at least, the S that is current now is "Summer".
It comes from  the Summer Time act, which specifies that
Eastern Summer Time is what it shall be called.  It doesn't
actually specify the abbreviation (acronym) but it is a
pretty obvious step...

The people who stick an "A" in the Aust time zone labels are
just doing it to try and stay unambiguous with the US labels
that are largely similar (except Aus has WST instead of PST,
and we have no fourth M zone, being of a similar width but lower
latitude).  The A is no more correct than it would be to call
-0500 NAEST (or USEST or something) - though in some uses doing
so might save a lot of problems.

kre