Long ago there was a radio station, maybe shortwave, that only broadcast announcements of the time. IIRC, the GMT was announced every 10 seconds, with beeps in between at 1 second intervals.
What was that station? And what happened to it?
Possibly WWV:
WWV?
Still around.
WWV - That’s it! Thanks
There are a lot of stations that broadcast the time. Back when I was in college (many years ago) I had a shortwave receiver and I used to set my watch by one of them.
I did some googling and found this list:
http://www.dxinfocentre.com/time.htm
Don’t all radio stations have to announce the time and their call letters periodically, no matter what sort of programming they feature?
Assuming we’re talking about US broadcasters, yes.
[Quote=FCC Regulations]
§ 73.1201
Station identification.
(a) When regularly required. Broadcast station identification announcements shall be made:
(1) At the beginning and ending of each time of operation, and
(2) Hourly, as close to the hour as feasible, at a natural break in program offerings. Television and Class A television broadcast stations may make these announcements visually or aurally.
[/quote]
I listened to that on shortwave as a kid. It was on 10Mhz…
“dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum… At the tone, 15 hours, 46 minutes, coordinated universal time… BONG… dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum…”
Station identifications currently require the call letters and city of license but I don’t think they’re required to announce the time.
You’re hearing WWV on shortwave, perhaps on a radio like we had that had both weather bands and the WWV time band. It’s actually kind of cool to see how each minute is divided by the clicks, shown here.
There is also WWVH in Kauai Hawaii, which we visited in 1986. There was a tourist guidebook that said you could visit them, and I was able to convince the wife to humor me and stop there (it’s kind of at the end of the road on the south side of the island). The security gate guard asked what we wanted, and they just waved us through. We entered the building and an engineer set down his sandwich and bag of chips and walked us around the atomic clocks, answering any questions we had. I could have upset the US time system by flipping a power switch (but I didn’t). I wonder if they still allow visitors due to security concerns.
There is also WWVH in Hawaii.
WWV transmits continuously on 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz.
WWVH transmits on 2.5, 5, 10, and 15 MHz.
Depends on what time of the day you’re listening as to which one you can pick up. Us ham operators know these things.
If you have an “Atomic Clock” that sets itself, that is usually/always accomplished by it syncing to the WWV broadcast.
By the way, there is a Twitter account that only broadcasts the time (actually my favorite Twitter account):
Canada broadcasts on station CHU from Ontario. WWV is sometimes difficult on the east coast.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a web site: http://time.gov/widget/widget.html. It even measures the Internet time lag and displays the estimated error. It is usually accurate to within 0.2 seconds. I hit reload if the error is more than 0.3 seconds.
Now that long distance is free, the National Bureau of Standards has a recording at 202 762 1401. Keep in mind that cell phones may have a lag of about 0.3(?) seconds.
I always rather liked WWVB, which broadcasts on a much lower frequency of 60 kHz (IIRC). It broadcasts a time code, rather than an audio signal. Those “Atomic Clock” devices that use radio generally use this signal.