I had a Radio Shack weather radio that also had a band for WWV and WWVH. It was as accurate as you could get at the time.
Years ago we had a vacation on Kauai, which has a Department of Commerce building broadcasting WWVH, located at a Navy base. On a whim, since we were nearby, I thought it would be interesting to visit. Explaining why I was there at the gate, they let us through and directed us where to go. We entered the building, where one of the engineers looked up, set down his lunch of a sandwich and chips, and led us into the lab with the HP (?) frequency generators and radio transmitters. I could have turned a dial or flipped a switch, but he watched me quite closely. I didn’t touch anything, I promise! We talked a bit about the equipment and antennas, since I had a BSEE degree and could relate. We then left (and found a cafe serving coconut cream pie, yum!).
Having worked for CBS Radio several years ago (when CBS still owned radio stations) it was standard procedure for all of their stations to be on a 15 second digital delay at all times, even the music stations, just in case someone said something they shouldn’t have. What you’re hearing on your radio is the delay. I would think the current owners (Audacy) would have the same procedure in place.
I am a total time nerd and track the accuracy of all my mechanical wristwatches every day, using an app to plot variation over time. For that I use time.is and find that its accommodation for network latency is more than enough for me.
I have a ham radio on my desk, and tuning to WWV demonstrates that the website and the time broadcast are so tightly aligned that I cannot hear/see any difference. Any discrepancy is below my physical perception limit.
Install a Linux server. Install an NTP server app (AlmaLinux comes with chrony available in default repositories and, if the system was set up as a server, pre-installed).
Configure chronyd to poll stratum 2 servers. Allow chronyd to serve NPT responses to clients in the local network.
In my 'hood it was 853-1212. A quick Google search shows that was the number in many area codes.
In my youth:
At the tone, the time will be … 10 … 56 … and 10 seconds … exactly [BEEP]
[She was Siri before Siri was cool. I still think of her from [wait for it] time to time]
Good times.
I use the time.gov website, but only twice a year – beginning and end of DST. Clocks and watches are so damned accurate these days, I’m rarely far off on any watch, clock, or device (that doesn’t automatically sync wirelessly).
If you still have a cable box with a time on it, I found that the time on those is exact, at least to the second. The downside is you have to wait for the minute to tick by.
GPS, Global Positioning System time, is the atomic time scale implemented by the atomic clocks in the GPS ground control stations and the GPS satellites themselves. GPS time was zero at 0h 6-Jan-1980 and since it is not perturbed by leap seconds GPS is now ahead of UTC by 18 seconds
Although the GPS system also knows about that 18 seconds. And “GPS time” itself is only used internally between the control center, the satellites, and the receivers.
So IMO there’s no obvious way to know whether your GPS receiver is displaying raw GPS time or UTC derived from GPS time. Sure, your owner’s manual might say, but maybe it doesn’t.
I have an app on my Android phone for monitoring GPS satellites. It’s a geek toy, not a navigator:
The time it displays is a few seconds off the time on my phone. But nowhere near 18 seconds off. So I suspect it’s displaying GPS time with the correction. And my phone is a few seconds off UTC.
I remember because there was a ‘standard’ or advertised number. One day a friend of mine was calling time and then said, “oops, I forgot a number in the middle” and then just tacked it on at the end. Imagine my surprise when that worked! It was then he let me in on the fact any last 4 numbers worked.
In my neighborhood, suburban Maryland, 555-1212 was directory information, which for many years was a live operator who would read out your requested number. Eventually it was automated: they would listen to your request, say “Hold for the number,” and an automated voice would read it out.
844-1212 was time. 844=TI4, TI standing for TIME.
I think any other numbers could be substituted for 1212 for either.
I like to build clocks or clock-adjacent objects and I use ESP32 microcontrollers that can use NTP to sync their time, and also use a library to adjust for Daylight Saving Time.
Works well, down to a fraction of a second. One clock I made in two parts, one each for hours and minutes. Instead of adding a communications link, I just sync each individually. It’s close enough that I can’t see any lag by eye (i.e., 59->00 happens at exactly the same time as 11->12).