[tz] Historical discrepancies for Italy.

[Michael H Deckers]

    On 2016-10-21 23:43, Paul Eggert wrote about the INRIM tables on 
legal time in Italy:
> First, do their tables reflect Italian legal time, or the time that 
> was observed on the ground in Rome? The difference might matter during 
> the period of German occupation of Rome, roughly from 1943-09-10 to 
> 1944-06-04.
>
    INRIM can only disseminate time as determined by law or decree or 
order issued before
    the fact. What the Romans do is always a different matter, and is 
difficult to
    determine 70 years later. Besides, in recent cases where legal time 
has been observed
    to differ from widespread usage (eg Turkey), the tz database 
describes legal time.

    For 1967..1979, all steps in the Italian time scale were announced in
    the "Gazzetta Ufficiale", as required by the law: "legge 1144 del 
1966-12-24" in
[http://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1966-12-24;1144]
    The list in
[http://www.ac-ilsestante.it/MERIDIANE/ora_legale/ORA_LEGALE_ESTIVA_IN_ITALIA.htm].
    gives all these announcements. For the time of occupation, this 
source also cites a
    Genovese newspaper -- which is still prescriptive. It also quotes a 
law from 1866
    about zone times in Sardegna and Sicilia.

    Anyway, these sources seem to agree with the tables of INRIM. The latest
    discrepancy from the tz database time scale Europe/Rome is in 1974, 
well after
    the somewhat-arbitrary cutoff at 1970.

    Michael Deckers.