[LEAPSECS] pick your own length of second

[Steve Allen]

On Wed 2012-01-11T13:33:33 -0800, Tom Van Baak hath writ:

> In retrospect it's too bad |DUT1| had to be so tight. If Essen

> and friends had made it 10 s we wouldn't need leap seconds

> in a lifetime.


The original draft which became Rec.  460 had words to allow leaps of
multiple seconds.  The proceedings of the plenary do not describe the
discussion which led to the restriction to 1 second.

I think this was a "quality of legislation" issue wherein
"status quo is intolerable; we've got to get agreement to do something now"
outweighed
"we should think about the long-term implications of this wording".

--
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