[LEAPSECS] happy anniversary pips

[Rob Seaman]

I could have sworn that was Nye v Ham, not the State of the Union…

On Feb 5, 2014, at 4:50 PM, Richard Clark <rclark at noao.edu> wrote:


> I'm surprised that someone on the list hasn't already pointed this out.

> 

> Today February 5 2014 (already yesterday in much of the world) marks

> the 90th anniversary of the BBC's time pips as we know them.

> 

> I had been thinking about broadcast time signals recently. Here in the

> USA we just experienced another State of the Union address. The most

> interesting part of this event is the opportunity to compare the same

> programming stream going out simultaneously on numerous tv channels and

> radio stations. I found variation in lag between various sources of 10

> seconds or more. The 'earliest' source seemed to be a local NPR station,

> although I did not include the off-the-air signals from local tv stations.

> I got those from Direct TV.

> 

> Digital buffering and decoding delays seem to be more randum than the

> distribution of leap seconds.

> 

> Richard Clark

> rclark at noao.edu