Amazing isn't it. John Harrison spent his entire working life perfecting his chronometer and it was "only" accurate to a few seconds in the month. I bought my watch from The Warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain) over two years ago, it's still accurate within five seconds and it cost about what you paid. Check the Wikipedia entry on John Harrison; a real story of pereverance, political intrique and double dealing with an eventual happy ending.
A week ago I posted a surprised message about a $6 watch from walmart that seemed to be accurate.
I have a little more data now.
About 2 weeks ago, I set this watch very accurately to time that is kept by syncronizing with an NTP server (atomic clock), to the second.
Today I checked time again whiel trying to be very good at catching the right moment. I typed "date" and pressed ENTER just as the arm of the watch passed :00:00.
The result is that the watch is not even by one second off!!! Obviously, there are limits to my own precision in how I pressed the return key right when the watch ticked :00, plus the OS delay in starting "date", but in any case I could not detect any difference.
I find it rather amazing, really.
The watch is a quartz watch with hands, "water resistant".
Quartz crystal oscillators can be extremely precise. I worked in an electronics design group for awhile that designed crystal oscillator chips, so I felt a pull to own a watch which used one. I wound up with a nice Tag Heuer, keeps great time too.
GWE
Go here to have the correct time available at your compouter at all times.
Thanks Bob, I already use NTP to keep computer time accurate.
i
What a fascinating article. Thank you.
i
Yes, the Borg-Mart need accurate watches to synchronize their minions...
Pete C.
I can't believe the amount of "going on" about time to the second. If I'm within 5 or 10 minutes I'm perfectly happy. Buses are always late, Trains even moreso, and airlines, you have to be there anywhere from 1 to 2 hours early anyway. I can't see any place that requires that kind of timing. :-) Even the various TV stations don't seem to be on the same time. :-) ...lew... (of course I'm retired)
Dava Sobel's "Longitude" is a great read about what Harrison went through.
nah!, its quite normal for a pc clock to be way out, use a ntp program that can sync the pc clock to an atomic clock, then you won't have problems.
Quartz crystals gradually age, so it will be interesting to see how well it keeps time in, say, a year's time. ( The warmth of your body and your built-in thermostat will effectively keep the temperature variations under some control. )
I simply run ntp every hour. That's the way computers are supposed to be run.
i
I run NTP occasionally to syncronise but my main point was that my pc keeps seriously crap time. Most pcs I have used keep to within seconds a week if not months whereas my current pc of the last 6 years gains about
1 m>>
All PCs I saw were lousy at keeping time with their clocks.
i
I havea sunbeam walclock with a taiwan mechanism that went thru a fire and still never drops a second. A single AA battery lasts 2 years in this one. I hate time. It just never stops and this clock just ticks away loudly. I'm gonna have to discus this thing
I'm sitting here in the home office surrounded by computers with Internet NIST synchronized clocks and my three WWVB NIST synchronized wall clocks for east, central and west. It's oddly amusing to watch the hands on the wall clocks all step in sync and in sync with the computers.
Pete C.
Are the clocks in older PCs quartz oscillators, or are they something inferior? I remember them keeping very poor time. When I got a Sun workstation I remember being pleasantly surprised that the clock kept time. But then the Sun uses this "Timekeeper RAM" chip, which is quite expensive in itself.
Chris
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required