telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (10/28/90)
It is that day again: the day when folks in the United States set our
clocks back one hour, to make up for the one hour advancement we made
in April. Sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, move your clocks
back an hour to resume *Standard* time. The official changeover time
is 2:00 AM Sunday morning local time, of course.
For a curious, yet quite accurate rendition of the correct time, try
calling 1-202-653-1800 Sunday morning at 1:59 AM Eastern Daylight Time
... after the talking clock reaches 1:59:50 Eastern Daylight Time, it
will tell you the time is 1:00:00 Eastern Standard Time ... never
missing a beat, or a tick-tock as it were.
I was asked once if a telephone call beginning at 1:59 AM on the final
day of daylight time which ended three minutes later at 1:02 AM on the
first day of standard time would be charged for three minutes; 23
hours and three minutes or not at all. Or, would they give you credit
for the 57 minutes you were NOT on the phone that hour. :) I
explained that it was set up to compensate for calls which covered the
same time period on the last Sunday morning in April, when callers
were charged for one hour and three minutes. :)
In any event, do slow down and stay in step with the rest of us,
starting Sunday morning at 2:00 AM *whatever* time zone you are in. To
set computer clocks:
1-202-653-0351 1200 baud (NAVOSBY)
1-202-494-4774 1200 baud (National Bureau of Standards)
For a voice rendition:
1-202-653-1800 If you don't want to pay a premium
1-900-410-TIME If you don't mind paying a little extra
Patrick Townsondavid@uunet.uu.net (David E A Wilson) (10/29/90)
telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >It is that day again: the day when folks in the United States set our >clocks back one hour, to make up for the one hour advancement we made >in April. Sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, move your clocks >back an hour to resume *Standard* time. The official changeover time >is 2:00 AM Sunday morning local time, of course. What a coincidence - this year our daylight saving started on 29-Oct-90 at 2am Australian Eastern Standard Time (which became 3am Australian Eastern Summer Time). This year all the states (except Western Australia & the Northern Territory) agreed to start on the same day (in past years Queensland was out by a week or two). Apparently a number of newspapers in Queensland had instructed their readers to move their clocks BACK rather than the correct forward. The telecom connection? According to one news item on the radio, in Queensland the Telecom speaking clock also went backwards by mistake. The lack of a deterministic algorithm for the start/end of daylight saving causes us no end of problems with our computers. Our Sequent computer and all our Annex boxes thought it started last week. Our Sun's got it right this year. David Wilson Dept Comp Sci, Uni of Wollongong david@cs.uow.edu.au
jyoull@andy.bgsu.edu (Jim Youll) (10/29/90)
I once had a nifty program which called NBS and synchronized my computer's clock with theirs. My copy on disk broke a couple of years ago, and I lost the spare which was in my library of diskettes. Per your previous posting, I thought you might have a copy of this program, or could tell me where to find it. It was accompanied by some very interesting text about how the two computers negotiate their connection, determine what the various delays are, and ultimately get the two clocks (somewhat) in sync. Thanks in advance, Jim PS: TELECOM Digest is great reading... [Moderator's Note: Readers? Can anyone send Jim the program he wants, or advise him which public directory he can ftp to get it? PAT] PS: I think so too! :) Thanks for writing.
merlyn@digibd.com (Brian Westley (Merlyn LeRoy)) (10/31/90)
>try calling 1-202-653-1800 Sunday morning at 1:59 AM Eastern Daylight Time > ... after the talking clock reaches 1:59:50 Eastern Daylight Time, it >will tell you the time is 1:00:00 Eastern Standard Time ... When they insert leap-seconds at the end of the year, does it state the time as 11:59:50 ... 11:59:60 ... 12:00:00 ? Just Wondering, Merlyn LeRoy [Moderator's Note: No they don't, but that is due to the message length. They actually only give the time twice every fifteen seconds, at ten and then five second intervals. The entire fifteen second message goes like this: (in the first nine seconds) "US Naval Observatory Master Clock: At the tone, Eastern Standard (Daylight) Time, H hours, M minutes, S seconds." Or the word 'exactly' in lieu of zero seconds. Then a one second signal tone, followed by (in the next four seconds) "Universal Time, H hours, M minutes, S seconds." In this rendition, S has been incremented by 5. Another one second signal tone, then back to the first message. There isn't enough time to speak the entire message every five seconds, let alone every second. On ocassions of adding a leap-second, they simply stall the rendition for an additional second. This organization, the US NAVOSY, was responsible for setting all the Western Union master clocks throughout the USA for a half-century. Ask me about the Western Union Clock Service sometime. :) PAT]
cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) (10/31/90)
You write: >This organization, the US NAVOSY, was responsible for setting all the >Western Union master clocks throughout the USA for a half-century. Ask >me about the Western Union Clock Service sometime. :) PAT] Consider yourself asked. In other words, enqueue job! cowan@marob.masa.com (aka ...!hombre!marob!cowan) [Moderator's Note: Actually, it was the "Time Service". Read on in this issue. We have covered this before, but a lot of newer readers would not remember. PAT]
FREE0612@uiucvmd (David Lemson) (11/01/90)
A few years ago I listened at midnight on December 31st (well, I guess it was technically January 1st) to the National Bureau of Standards' broadcast of radio station WWV so I could hear the leap second. The way they used to broadcast the time was "Fourteen hours, thirteen minutes, Coordinated Universal Time ... BEEP" With a click each second. I counted the clicks, waiting for midnight. What they did was simply add an extra "click" for the leap second. On hours and quarter hours, WWV offers "interesting" information between the minute-beeps, such as sunspot pattern. The minute after the leap second was added, they gave a message about how the extra second was added. WWV is on several "shortwave" frequencies, including 15.000 MHz, 10.000 MHz, and a few others I can't remember right now. David Lemson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign d-lemson@uiuc.edu
ben@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Benjamin Ellsworth) (11/01/90)
I call (303) 499-7111 (a line to the Nat'l Bureau of Standards) for a
voice rendition of the NBS time.
Benjamin Ellsworth ben@cv.hp.com
All relevant disclaimers apply.
[Moderator's Note: The only reason I do not often recommend this one
is because you only get the voice time announcement once a minute. On
the NAVOSBY system you can be on and off in about 15 secons or less.
On the NBS line, its conceivable you could be charged for a two minute
phone call if you happen to come in a couple seconds before the
minute. But their other announcements on the quarter hour are
worthwhile also sometimes. PAT]johnw@uunet.uu.net (John Wheeler) (11/01/90)
telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >For a voice rendition: > 1-202-653-1800 If you don't want to pay a premium > 1-900-410-TIME If you don't mind paying a little extra > Let us not forget the NIST WWV phone version at (303)499-7111. If you call at the top of the hour, you'll hear the complete station ID and address info. John Wheeler
rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees) (11/02/90)
In article <14168@accuvax.nwu.edu>, TELECOM Moderator notes:
Ask me about the Western Union Clock Service sometime. :) PAT]
OK, I'll ask. I have a clock at home that's marked on the face
"Western Union, Naval Observatory Time." It originally held two
F-cells that wound up an ordinary pendulum clock mechanism. The
interesting part is that it also has terminals to connect wires from
"outside." The clock apparently expects to get a synchronizing pulse
on these wires. If the clock is within five minutes of the top of the
hour, then the trailing edge of the pulse will set it to exactly on
the hour.
I have no specs on the pulse, but the clock seems to be happiest with
about a 6-volt, half-second pulse.
So, I called up Western Union to ask them what it would cost to have
the synchronizing pulses brought into my house. The rep I talked to
had never heard of this service.
What I did was replace the F-cells with alkaline D-cells. For the
pulses, I went to the local Service Merchandise and bought the
cheapest alarm watch they had that could be set to beep every hour on
the hour. I soldered a couple of wires to the piezo element and
designed a little circuit with a FET front end (so as not to load down
the watch battery) and a big power transistor to fire a pulse at the
synchronizing solenoid in the clock.
So every ten minutes or so, the clock makes a soft whirring sound as
the spring winds up, and every hour the watch beeps and the
synchronizing solenoid pulls in with a satisfying "ker-chunk." I love
this clock. I love to picture thousands of them across the country
all ker-chunking at the same time.
When were these clocks first deployed? How long did they last? Where
were they installed? How much did it cost to have the pulses
delivered? Was there really a network of wires stretching across the
country from the Naval Observatory in Bethesda?
[Moderator's Note: I replaced the batteries in mine with a three volt
DC transformer I plug in the wall. I've never heard of them winding
every ten minutes; usually it is once an hour, and the winding takes
8-10 seconds, depending on the strength of the batteries. Western
Union first offered the service a few years before the start of this
century. They discontinued it about 1965. No one at Western Union has
heard of it unless they've worked there more than 25 years and/or have
read the history of the company. Even 30 years ago it was being
'phased out' with only grandfathered customers allowed to keep it.
If you have the clock hanging level then the use of the setting
circuit is probably an overkill. Mine run without it and may be out of
adjustment by one minute over a month's time. I have the setting
circuits on my two clocks wired in series down to a doorbell buzzer
under my desk and a nine volt battery. A call to NAVOSBY every month
at 202-653-1800 and a tap of the button at the proper moment does the
job. There were about a dozen circuits out of NAVOSBY in all
directions which were tapped along the way and fed to master clocks
which in turn fed other masters, etc .. sort of like branches and
twigs on a tree. The clocks lasted for years, like all good
workmanship years agp used to last. Many are still running in private
places like your home and mine. One of mine is 91 years old. The one
I got from the Chicago Temple Building lobby (when they no longer
appreciated it and gave it to me in exchange for an electric clock I
gave them I got at Fields!) had a pencilled inscription on the wall
behind its mounting saying it was installed May 25, 1927 in that spot.
I brought it home in 1974 and restarted it. The one I got from the
Board of Ed lunchroom was installed around 1910. I got it in 1972, and
had to strip several coats of ugly paint from the wooden case. The ID
tag on the works say it was built in 1899. I guess the Board of Ed
must have been its second home. Western Union gave the clocks for free
to whoever subscribed to the Time Service which cost fifty cents per
month in the beginning; a dollar a month at the end. I have not seen
any of the clocks at the place where they originally hung for probably
twenty years. PAT]nol2105%dsacg2.dsac.dla.mil@dsac.dla.mil (Robert E. Zabloudil) (11/02/90)
In article <14201@accuvax.nwu.edu> FREE0612@uiucvmd (David Lemson) writes: >WWV is on several "shortwave" frequencies, including 15.000 MHz, >10.000 MHz, and a few others I can't remember right now. As a former SWL junkie, I've practically got 'em memorized: WWV broadcasts on 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz as I recall; as an interesting sidelight, their sister station WWVH is on most of the same frequencies. At the right time of year/day on the right frequency they make interesting harmonics together. [Moderator's Note: Interference between WWV in Boulder, CO and WWVH in Hawaii is common in the western United States. Usually the two stations transmit a tone with the ticking except for the times they make announcements. But during the time one station is making announcements the other side silences the tone. Please note also the lady on WWVH announces the time at about 45 seconds; WWV comes in rightr behind her and announces the time at about 53 seconds; both beep together on the minute. That delay keeps them from walking on each other. PAT]
johnw@uunet.uu.net (John Wheeler) (11/03/90)
nol2105%dsacg2.dsac.dla.mil@dsac.dla.mil (Robert E. Zabloudil) writes: >[Moderator's Note: Interference between WWV in Boulder, CO and WWVH in >Hawaii is common in the western United States. Usually the two >stations transmit a tone with the ticking except for the times they >make announcements. But during the time one station is making >announcements the other side silences the tone. Please note also the >lady on WWVH announces the time at about 45 seconds; WWV comes in >right behind her and announces the time at about 53 seconds; both >beep together on the minute. That delay keeps them from walking on >each other. PAT] For your trivial information, that 'lady' on WWVH is none other than Atlanta's Jane Barbe, the voice of hundreds of thousands of intercept messages heard 'round the world. I have her demo tape, and it's quite possible that she has the most 'played' voice in the world. {Esquire Magazine} did a story on her around 1970. Her husband, John, is a music composer. I forget the WWV guy's name, but he's also an Atlantan. I believe Audichron did the actual messages. BTW ... the inflection on the new "National Institute of Standards and Technology Time..." message at the top of the hour was obviously recorded to have the time itself attached ... but instead they're using it by itself as a sentence. Sounds really wrong! John Wheeler
philip@beeblebrox.dle.dg.com (Philip Gladstone) (11/06/90)
In article <14168@accuvax.nwu.edu> merlyn@digibd.com (Brian Westley (Merlyn LeRoy)) writes: >When they insert leap-seconds at the end of the year, does it state >the time as 11:59:50 ... 11:59:60 ... 12:00:00 ? A point to note is that the leap second which is inserted (or removed) is the last second before 00:00:00 *GMT*. I've always wondered how the change is handled as it occurrs in the middle of the evening for US people, which is a time when it might get noticed. Over here, the winter change happens during New Year's celebrations and nobody is sober enough to care! Philip Gladstone Development Lab Europe Data General, Cambridge England. +44 223-67600
tnixon@uunet.uu.net (Toby Nixon) (11/06/90)
The Naval Observatory digital time service (modem access) can be reached on +1 202 653 0351. Access is 1200bps (Bell 212), 7 data bits, even parity, 1 stop bit. It outputs information in the format: jjjjj nnn hhmmss UTC where "jjjjj" is the Julian date, "nnn" is the day of the current year, "hhmmss" is the current time (Coordinated Universal Time). I'm sure most folks know how to calculate local time from this, and could write a quick little program to place the call, do the calculation, and set the clock. One very nice program (I believe the one referred to in the original article in this thread) that will place calls to this number and automatically set the system clock on a variety of IBM PC-compatible systems is "Professional TIMESET" by Dr. Peter Petrakis of Life Sciences Editorial Services, 1236 River Bay Road, Annapolis MD 21401. It's a shareware program ($35 individuals, $75 institutions), that comes with excellent documentation and several support programs. I downloaded it from Compuserve. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-449-8791 Telex 151243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 USA | Internet hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net
dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin) (11/07/90)
In volume 10, issue 793, Philip Gladstone wrote: | A point to note is that the leap second which is inserted (or removed) | is the last second before 00:00:00 *GMT*. Leap seconds are never removed. The whole reason that we have leap seconds is that the second was redefined in the late 1960's by some physical or atomic standard (just as the meter was redefined around the same time and the inch followed); there was a choice between a definition that was slightly too short for 1/86,400 of an average solar day and having to add leap seconds occasionally and one that was slightly too long with a result of needing to skip leap seconds occasionally. The selection was the former for the very reason that holding a clock still to add a leap second was considered less difficult (or less confusing) than speeding one up to skip a leap second. Surely some of the readers can name organizations, dates, and people involved in that decision. | I've always wondered how the change is handled as it occurrs in the middle | of the evening for US people, which is a time when it might get noticed. | Over here, the winter change happens during New Year's celebrations and | nobody is sober enough to care! Nobody? Maybe no one of Mr. Gladstone's acquaintance, but nobody? Anyhow, yes, in North America the leap seconds are added in the late afternoon or early evening, but most people aren't affected by a single second one way or the other, so people who are interested in timekeeping notice it and those who are not do not; imbibing has nothing to do with it. How did the UK cope with the leap second added on June 30, 1972, when fewer people were inebriated? [Perhaps Mr. Gladstone's crowd got drunk then too; a leap second is reason enough just on its own for a blowout. You have to spend that extra second doing *something*.] David Tamkin Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 708 518 6769 312 693 0591 MCI Mail: 426-1818 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com
af@sei.ucl.ac.be (Alain FONTAINE (Postmaster - NAD)) (11/08/90)
CCIR Report 517 does indeed describe to procedure for introducing a 'negative' leap second, but it was never actually needed. Please note that there were also June 30 leap seconds in 81, 82, 83 and 85. Should raise some concern among anti-alcoholic leagues 8-). And don't forget to buy bottles in time for the Dec 31, 1990 leap second! AF
louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) (11/08/90)
>Leap seconds are never removed.
Well, none have ever been removed *yet*. The Network Time Protocol
has a leap-second warning field in the packet, which indicates a leap
second will occur at the end of the current day. There are provisions
for both adding and deleting a leap second.
louieturner@ksr.com (James M. Turner) (11/08/90)
hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net (Toby Nixon) writes: >One very nice program is "Professional TIMESET" by Dr. Peter Petrakis >of Life Sciences Editorial Services, 1236 River Bay Road, Annapolis >MD 21401. Not to toot my own horn, but I've just posted a Unix tool called utcclock to alt.sources and comp.protocols.time.ntp, which calls this number and sets your clock accurate to about +/- 50ms. Name: James M. Turner Company: Kendall Square Research Email: turner@ksr.com, ksr!turner Phone: (617) 895-9400
covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert 11-Nov-1990 2041) (11/12/90)
From: Greg Monti
Date: 5 November 1990
TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu> writes:
> In any event, do slow down and stay in step with the rest of us,
> starting Sunday morning at 2:00 AM *whatever* time zone you are in. To
> set computer clocks:
> 1-202-653-0351 1200 baud (NAVOSBY)
> 1-202-494-4774 1200 baud (National Bureau of Standards)
Hmm, That second one is impossible. There is no 202-494 exchange nor
is there one in 301 or 703 within the old "7-digit distance" of 202.
Dunno the correct number, but Nat Bur Stds main number is 301 975-2000
in Gaithersburg, MD, if anyone cares to negotiate the bureaucracy to
find it. :)
Greg Monti, Arlington, VA; work +1 202 822-2633
[Moderator's Note: Well actually I meant to say area 303, as in
Boulder, CO -- not 202. Thanks for catching it. PAT]0002909785@mcimail.com (J. Stephen Reed) (11/12/90)
David Tamkin (and others) have just rescued a small portion of my mental health! Tamkin recently responded to an item on the "leap second": >> [Philip Gladstone:] >> A point to note is that the leap second which is inserted (or >> removed) is the last second before 00:00:00 *GMT*. > Leap seconds are never removed. The whole reason that we have leap > seconds is that the second was redefined in the late 1960's by some > physical or atomic standard (just as the meter was redefined around > the same time and the inch followed); there was a choice between a > definition that was slightly too short for 1/86,400 of an average > solar day and having to add leap seconds occasionally and one that > was slightly too long with a result of needing to skip leap seconds > occasionally. I remember vividly being a callow lad of 13 on June 30, 1972, when the leap-second was announced in the papers for that night, as a curiosity item. It scared me to death! Why? Because I was credulous enough (as a brainy but unworldly kid would be) to take the AP wire reporter's explanation at face value. The way it was phrased, the explanation implied that the earth was not keeping pace with accurate clocks <because the earth was revolving more slowly all the time.> (True, in one sense, but far from the whole truth!) So I got out my dad's Bowmar Brain (arithmetic functions only, ten cubic inches, $299.95) to figure the number of seconds in a day, and then to divide that by five. (For the article predicted the need for a leap second every four to five years. This ended up being conservative, as someone else noted -- we've had ten or twleve since.) The quite natural result was that the earth would stop revolving in about A.D. 19252. (86,400 seconds/day divided by 5 being 17,280 years.) And, of course, this would be The End. Not in a geologic epoch, when the Sun turns nova, but in 700 human generations. I was scared stiff! As I matured, I suspected that something was wrong with that explanation of the leap second, but I put it at the back of my mind. Nonetheless, you don't shake pubescent fears that easily out of your subconscious. Later, I read that the mean solar day had been estimated to have shortened by as few as ten minutes over the past three billion years of geologic evidence. Still, though, this nagged at me. Thank you, Mr. Tamkin et al., for saving my mental equilibrium by <finally> stating the connection between clocks, the earth, and the leap second. Now on to more important things, like predicting when we'll "liberate" Kuwait. Steve Reed Liberty Network, Ltd. * P.O. Box 11296 * Chicago, IL 60611 0002909785@mcimail.com
tneff@bfmny0.bfm.com (Tom Neff) (11/14/90)
When I see all these automated clock setting tools being posted far and wide on CompuServe, Usenet etc., I can't help wondering: is the NBS up to the job of answering all the new calls generated from thousands of American basements and desktops?
tnixon@uunet.uu.net (Toby Nixon) (11/20/90)
In article <14701@accuvax.nwu.edu>, tneff@bfmny0.bfm.com (Tom Neff) writes: > When I see all these automated clock setting tools being posted far > and wide on CompuServe, Usenet etc., I can't help wondering: is the > NBS up to the job of answering all the new calls generated from > thousands of American basements and desktops? All I can say is that in all the calls I've made to these numbers, often several in a row, including on what one would consider to be "busy" nights (e.g., Daylight/Standard time transitions), I've never received a busy signal. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-449-8791 Telex 151243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 USA | Internet hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net