[time-nuts] Re: Crazy Clock

[Brian Lloyd]

Ah, the joys of childhood memories of the Simplex clocks in the schools 
back in the day. (It was the late 1960s.)

In high-school I was the teacher's aide for the electric/electronic 
shop. I was a strange duck in that I took all the college-prep courses 
but also all the industrial arts courses too. (I liked to build stuff 
AND understand the science and math behind it.) As teacher's aide I had 
my own set of keys for all of the industrial arts buildings, including 
the electrical closets. After all, I had to be able to reset tripped 
circuit breakers and admit maintenance personnel. The clocks were my 
first attempt at what would now be called "hacking".

In the main electrical room was a box that seemed to have nothing to do 
with any thing else. I opened it up and discovered references to the 
Simplex clock system. Hmm, A little experimentation and I discovered the 
lines that controlled the clock setting system, including the "advance 
to top of minute" line. Everything was 120VAC control making it easy to 
source the setting signals. Getting the assistance of others, I 
determined that doing setting commands in one building affected the 
clocks in the whole school AND the master clock. So I built my own 
control box for the clocks.

One of the features was a "get out of school early" switch, which 
connected the bell circuit to the "advance to top of minute" circuit. 
Since the bells were sequenced by the master clock, every time the 
master clock would activate a bell in our building (at the top of a 
minute), it would advance all the clocks by 1 minute. Since no single 
class lost more than a couple of minutes, the teachers didn't do 
anything about it and just stuck to the time on the clock. At the end of 
the day the clocks would have accumulated about 20-25 minutes of error 
and we would go home early.

I got away with this for several weeks before someone reported me to the 
principal. Stupid me, I told too many people. (It WAS a very cool hack 
in those days before we had computers to play with.)

Many years later the school district raised money for some project by 
building a wall of memory bricks that were sold to the alumni of the 
school district. An alumnus could purchase a brick and designate an 
inscription. It would then be put into the wall. Since both my mother 
and my aunt had attended the same school district they were able to buy 
a brick. The inscription?

 Â Â Â  Brian Lloyd - He advanced time.

This triggers another memory -- the one where I realized I was a time 
nut. I discovered WWV when I was about 7. I became obsessed with making 
sure that all the clocks and watches in our house were regularly set to 
WWV. (I would check my watch every morning.) I still do, only now most 
of the clocks are set to GPS, WWVB, or NTP running off my local 
GPS-disciplined NTP server. Those that aren't are still checked and 
reset every week. I suspect there are others here who share that obsession.

-- 


 <https://www.lloyd.aero>

Brian Lloyd
706 Flightline
Spring Branch, TX 78070
brian at lloyd.aero <mailto://brian@lloyd.aero>
+1.210.620.0011