[time-nuts] question about multi-way measurement

[Steve Allen]

On Wed 2018-12-26T10:30:24-0600 Chris Howard hath writ:
> I see the different forms of deviation measurements and they are all
> one-to-one comparisons.
>
> Is there anything to be learned from doing mass data gathering?

> So, has this sort of thing been done?
> Why is everything one-to-one only?

Doing this was the reason for the creation of the Bureau International
de l'Heure (BIH) a century ago.  The initial announcement of their
work invited observatories around the world to participate via
correspondence sending the received times of radio time signals.
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/full/1922BuBIH...1....1.

A few years later they presented to the 1928 General Assembly of the
IAU a complete history of timekeeping and an inventory of their
equipment including the clocks at l'Observatoire de Paris which were
located down in the catacombs to maintain stable conditions
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/full/1929BuBIH...3..255.

The progression of issues of Bulletin Horaire shows the development of
technologies and techniques for intercomparing clocks from the age of
pendulum clocks with constant pressure cases into the age of atomic
chronometers.  At the retirement of two long-time staffers they
published plots of the improvement of timekeeping from 1922 to 1964.
https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/annastoyko.html

--
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