The creation of the BIH was decided upon during the 1912 ''Conférence internationale de l'heure radiotélégraphique''. The following year an attempt was made to regulate the international status of the bureau through the creation of an
international convention. However, the convention wasn't ratified by its member countries due to the outbreak of
World War I. In 1919, after the war, it was decided to make the bureau the executive body of the
International Commission of Time, one of the commissions of the then newly founded
International Astronomical Union (IAU), which had its headquarters in Paris. Although international in its missions, the BIH was, throughout its history, essentially French in terms of its funding. Until 1966, the director of the
Paris Observatory was also the BIH's director. In reality, the BIH's direction was entrusted to a
directeur-adjoint (deputy director) or a
chef des services du B.I.H. (head of B.I.H. services),
i.e, a person in charge of BIH with a title that sometimes varied in the history of BIH. In January 1920, the director of the Paris Observatory,
Benjamin Baillaud, delegated BIH's effective management to
Guillaume Bigourdan who was in charge of BIH until 1928. Armand Lambert directed BIH from 1928 to 1942.
Nicolas Stoyko was BIH's head from 1942 until he retired in 1964.
Bernard Guinot, BIH's last director, was in charge from the 1st of October 1964 until the BIH ceased to exist in 1988. From 1956 until 1987 the BIH was part of the Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical Data Analysis Services (FAGS). In 1987 the bureau's tasks of combining different measurements of
Universal Time were taken over by the
BIPM. Its tasks related to the correction of time with respect to the
celestial reference frame and the
Earth's rotation were taken over by the
IERS. ==References==