[HCDX] Fort Collins facility sets the standard for keeping time

["Arnaldo" <slaen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quick — look at your cell phone, or glance your watch. What time is it right 
now?
Oh, really?
How can you be so sure?
That timepiece has to base its claims on something. When you set it, you 
told your microwave or your watch what time it was. You got that time from a 
different clock somewhere else. Meanwhile, a little computer or a piece of 
quartz has been keeping track for you, but what does it actually track? What 
is a minute, anyway? What’s a second?
At some point, somebody has to keep an eye on those definition so seconds 
don’t get too short or too long, messing up everything from GPS satellites 
to the stock market to your paycheck. (Did you really work eight hours 
yesterday? According to whose clock?)
You can thank a bunch of radio engineers in Fort Collins for helping keep 
all that straight.
Four engineers in a compound northeast of the city keep watch, as it were, 
over the official atomic clock, and therefore the official time, of the 
United States.
The antennas at radio stations WWV and WWVB broadcast radio waves that 
synchronize everything from the stock market to traffic lights to your alarm 
clock. WWV broadcasts a signal you can hear; WWVB broadcasts a signal only 
your radio-controlled clock will recognize.
“Your computer clock has a crystal — it has the ability to keep your time,” 
said Douglas Sutton, an engineer with the National Institute of Standards 
and Technology. But, he pointed out, it has its limitations. Eventually, the 
clock will be fast or slow, and you’ll have to correct it.
“Say, in one week, you lose a second,” Sutton said. “Well, it’s our job to 
make sure you can correct that back to the proper time, because you’re 
referencing the standard.”
The windswept home of the nation’s timekeepers — where that standard is 
maintained — seems like any other rural site, complete with antelope tracks 
through the snow. But that’s before you see the copper-lined doors, the 
flickering, unplugged fluorescent lights powered by ambient energy and the 
massive antenna towers.
Before the proliferation of radio-controlled clocks — there are 3 million to 
4 million such clocks in the U.S. — government agencies were the atomic 
clock’s main users. Civilian use started in the early 1990s, and now, 
radio-controlled clocks (commonly but inaccurately called “atomic”) are 
widely available, often for a few dollars.
But they wouldn’t work — whether in Hilton Head, S.C., or Walla Walla, 
Wash. — without the radio towers based in Fort Collins.
For the complete story, go to www.fortcollinsnow.com.
WWV can be heard with any shortwave radio. A typical shortwave radio 
provides coverage from about 150 kHz to about 30 MHz. WWV broadcasts the 
time at 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz.
Telephone: Call (303) 499-7111 for WWV or (808) 335-4363 for WWVH, the 
atomic clock broadcast in Hawaii.
Online: The NIST Internet Time Service allows users to synchronize their 
computer clocks via the Internet. Most of the servers are in Boulder. The 
service requires a download that you can configure to access a specific 
server. Visit nist.time.gov to learn more.
(http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20090420/NEWS/904199981/1002/NONE&parentprofile=1001) 

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