[time-nuts] Used Hydrogen Maser

[Attila Kinali]

Moin,

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 10:55:07 -0700
"Richard (Rick) Karlquist" <richard at karlquist.com> wrote:

> FWIW, about 20 years ago, Len Cutler and Robin Giffard of 5071A fame
> built several Hg ion clocks to be shipped to some govt customer I
> don't remember.  One of the clocks was dropped by the shipping company
> UPS or FedEX) and destroyed.  Only then did Len learn that HP was
> self insured, probably as part of a package deal to get a low
> corporate shipping rate.  HP products were packed extremely well, so
> the only real risk was the unit getting stolen.  I vaguely remember
> Len saying they were out $10K, which was probably just the cost of
> parts.  Nevertheless, it didn't seem like building an Hg clock was
> all that big of a project.  Way simpler than the 5071A.
> Now a days, the electronics would be considerably easier and cheaper. 
> The mechanical parts would all be CNC'ed by an online machine shop.

Magnus just send me out to chase an (unrelated) paper and I stumbled
over [1] which describes the Hg standard that Cutler & Co built.
Remembering this discussion I thought it might be interesting to
some.


			Attila Kinali
"Trapped Mercury 199 Ion Frequency Standard", Cutler,
Giffard,  McGuire, PTTI, 1981
http://time.kinali.ch/ptti/1981papers/Vol%2013_30.pdf

-- 
The driving force behind research is the question: "Why?"
There are things we don't understand and things we always 
wonder about. And that's why we do research.
		-- Kobayashi Makoto