Hello Shipmates,
As a kid and up until the age of electronic watches it was not uncommon for me and other common folk to ask a perfect stranger what time they had - even though one had a watch on the wrist or in the pocket. We verified the accuracy of our watches as a community to help ensure we were on time.
Folks knew their watches so well they might include a disclaimer such as "I have 9:37, but Im probably fast 3 or 4 minutes."
In our town at precisely 6pm an air-raid siren would blast across the community. One could set a watch to it.
I used to set my wind-up Timex 5 or 10 minutes ahead just to make sure I was on-time for school or work.
One could call a phone number to get the correct local time (unsupported in the nation in which I currently reside.)
The second hand wasnt used as much to time boiling eggs as to make sure the watch still worked.
Nothing remotely like these things have happened to me in the past 30 years.
These days you are as likely to get a knife in the chest as receive some semblance of accurate time from a stranger.
Even the wearing of wrist watches has become less fashionable as cell phones increase in number, all of which give reasonable time however imperfect.
With cell phone, computer, and gps clocks being off from actual GMT, sometimes by a considerable amount, where can one go, besides WWV, to get accurate GMT?
Ive accessed several of the GMT web sites, including NIST, which say their time is accurate, but even they can differ from each other by several seconds. Knowing my chrono gains a second in about 3 days I usually set it behind a second which gives me a week of reasonably accurate GMT.
What has been your GMT reference, and how accurate has it been?
Smooth sailing
Joe
As a kid and up until the age of electronic watches it was not uncommon for me and other common folk to ask a perfect stranger what time they had - even though one had a watch on the wrist or in the pocket. We verified the accuracy of our watches as a community to help ensure we were on time.
Folks knew their watches so well they might include a disclaimer such as "I have 9:37, but Im probably fast 3 or 4 minutes."
In our town at precisely 6pm an air-raid siren would blast across the community. One could set a watch to it.
I used to set my wind-up Timex 5 or 10 minutes ahead just to make sure I was on-time for school or work.
One could call a phone number to get the correct local time (unsupported in the nation in which I currently reside.)
The second hand wasnt used as much to time boiling eggs as to make sure the watch still worked.
Nothing remotely like these things have happened to me in the past 30 years.
These days you are as likely to get a knife in the chest as receive some semblance of accurate time from a stranger.
Even the wearing of wrist watches has become less fashionable as cell phones increase in number, all of which give reasonable time however imperfect.
With cell phone, computer, and gps clocks being off from actual GMT, sometimes by a considerable amount, where can one go, besides WWV, to get accurate GMT?
Ive accessed several of the GMT web sites, including NIST, which say their time is accurate, but even they can differ from each other by several seconds. Knowing my chrono gains a second in about 3 days I usually set it behind a second which gives me a week of reasonably accurate GMT.
What has been your GMT reference, and how accurate has it been?
Smooth sailing
Joe