Bill pauses to check the time on his new atomic wristwatch.

[theweaselking]

Do not be misled. The many "atomic time" wristwatches you see on the market today are merely cheap quartz wristwatches with a built-in radio receiver. The watch sets itself from 60 kHz VLF radio time signals transmitted by NIST from station WWVB near the US atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. At least once a day, reception permitting, usually at night, the watch resets itself to compensate for the normal drift of a quartz crystal. The result is a self-setting, radio-controlled, atomic-time, wrist watch that is never off by more than a second or two a day. Impressive and convenient. But these are not atomic clocks.

Today we have the first true atomic wristwatch.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Hee!

(I have one of those clocks. Mr. Darcy has several, one for each time zone. Cause just, say, adding 3 is too much trouble apparently.)

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Batteries are included (they last about 45 minutes but are rechargeable).

I'm still giggling over this.

-K

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

Odd, I thought I saw this quite a while ago.

If I recall correctly, it was that very same picture the last time I saw it.