Comments on: An Extra Second

By: Robert-H-Goretsky

Robert-H-Goretsky — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:12:05 +0000

Robert H. Goretsky says I wonder if computers are ever adjusted for these extra seconds -- A 20-year-old system could be off by 10 seconds or so, according to this. While that doesn't sound like much, in timing-critical applications, such as stock trading, a few seconds could have a huge effect. I assume that those systems periodically sync up to an atomic clock, which would have made the adjustment. Then again, some of these older systems required millions of dollars of adjustments prior to the year 2000 just to know what year it was! Comment from Robert H. Goretsky of Hoboken, NJ

By: Merciless

Merciless — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:15:47 +0000

Dang it. I missed it. When’s the next one.

By: campo

campo — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:06:45 +0000

scamp, Amazing.

I HATE pigeons.. but not as much as I hate horses, elephants, cows, goats, and geese.

By: scamp

scamp — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:15:02 +0000

Heres a fact...

A few years ago, so many pigeons were perching on the miniute hand of Big Ben, they actully made the clock 5 miniutes slow! First time in history!

By: Daniel Lew

Daniel Lew — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:24:47 +0000

No, you got an extra second of sleep. I know I used mine to take another drink of sparkling cider...

BTW, interesting stuff MeasureMan.

By: JustAnotherName

JustAnotherName — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:20:45 +0000

RATS!! I slept right through it.

By: peppers

peppers — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 08:37:39 +0000

Damn thats pretty intresting MeasureMan. Pretty cool!

By: MeasureMan

MeasureMan — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 03:14:03 +0000

While in the Air Force, during the late 70’s and early 80’s, I worked in the field of PMEL (Precision Measuring Equipment Laborary) or Metrology. Metrology is the science of weights and measures or of measurement. While in this field I also received addition training in the field of Horology, the science of measuring time. One of my primary jobs was to maintain the cesium beam clocks used for communications on the flying command post. I had to keep these clock set to better than 10 microseconds (10 millionths of one second). If a leap second was imposed, I would need to be available to make the 1 second time shift in the event that the command post was activated and clocks needed. You probably now realize how I chose my user name, many people think it had something to do with music.