[time-nuts] Personal time keeping...

Jim Palfreyman jim77742 at gmail.com
Fri May 20 10:05:03 UTC 2011


I have posted about this before, but I actually have one of the
original six speaking clocks used in Australia. I keep it running and
found a way to synchronise it to the gps.

There was one in each state and it provided the message over the phone
as well as accurate time signals to radio stations. Originally it was
all synced back to a caesium unit in Melbourne via phone lines. They
knew the phone line delay because they put an atomic clock on a plane
and flew it to each state on installation.

It's my most treasured possession. I have it connected up to an old
black Bakelite phone for extra ooohhs and aaahhhs.

It's the size of a fridge.

Jim


On Friday, 20 May 2011, Dr. David Kirkby <david.kirkby at onetel.net> wrote:
> On 05/19/11 05:20 PM, Max Robinson wrote:
>
>
>
> Is anyone else old enough to remember when you would hear on the radio
> "Time at the tone, 5 o'clock. Beep." The tone was anywhere from half a
> second to one second long and it might have been hard to pin down if the
> beginning or the end of the tone was 5 o'clock but it was probably
> within a couple of seconds accuracy which was plenty good for setting
> your watch or the kitchen clock. Why don't you hear that now a days?
> Digital TV has latency which is dependant on the equipment used by the
> cable or satellite company and is somewhat variable between receiver
> manufacturers. The engineer of our local public radio station told me
> that digital radio has 7 seconds delay. When I asked the station manager
> if there were any plans to run studio time 7 seconds ahead of real time
> so listeners would get accurate time he just frowned.
>
> Regards.
>
> Max. K 4 O D S.
>
> Email: max at maxsmusicplace.com
>
>
> In the UK you can phone the number "123" from a BT phone and get:
>
> At the third stoke the time from BT will be 10 10 and fixty seconds beep beep beep
> At the third stoke the time from BT will be 10 11 precisely beep beep beep
> At the third stoke the time from BT will be 10 11 and ten seconds beep beep beep
>
> At one time (excuse the pun), it used to say something like "At the third stoke the time sponsored by Accurist will be ..."
>
> Before that, I can't recall, but I think when I was younger there was neither BT or Accurist in the message.
>
>
> --
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
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