[time-nuts] Odd request

Tim Shoppa shoppa at trailing-edge.com
Thu Jan 25 22:30:01 UTC 2007


"Mark Amos" <mark.amos at toast.net> wrote:
> I appreciate the comments regarding horological obsession.  Mine started with a desire for an accurate master 
> oscillator for my ham shack (built and use a couple Shera GPSDO's) and has blossomed into a much broader interest 
> in time (Ex tempus, sapientia?)  

Mine is obviously inherited. Mixed in among all the pictures of me
as a baby are pictures of hundreds of pocketwatches (mostly railroad
watches) that my dad collected :-).

> This has led me to a silly quest.  I'd like to use a traditional clock face and hands as an output device for a 
> 1PPS signal from my GPSDO.

Quartz clock movements with a second hand do exactly what you want. Deliver
1PPS and the second hand goes forward a tick a second.

Multiply up to 60Hz and drive a traditional 60Hz AC clock (TVB or
someone else illustrates
this with test equipment supplies driven from atomic clocks,
but this is, let's just say, overkill, but what isn't? :-) )

There are Bulova and other brands of instrumentation clocks that
are driven at more than 1PPS for smoother second hand movement.
Some of this shows up in the surplus stream. Most used Tuning forks
for the original frequency standard.

There are various synchronized clock movements out there that
show up on the surplus market but they usually have once-per-hour
and once-per-day sync pulses, not once-per-second.

Tim.




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