You can buy them...I've seen them advertised in aviation mags. Only a few thousand USD.
Note that I am not talking about the "atomic clocks" usually advertised, which are "atomic" only in that they are synchronized via radio to one of the NIST's radio stations (WWUV, say), but the Real Thing. I'm at work so I'm not going to google AAAS or AIP to find them...
emc
" When in doubt, use brute force." — Ken Thompson
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You can buy them...I've seen them advertised in aviation mags. Only a few thousand USD.
Yeah... I've seen them too. I used to work at a US Navy
Level II Calibration lab at the Naval Submarine Support
Facility New London (NAVSUBSUPFACNLON for you milspeak
types) in 1977. We used to have a bank of them to
calibrate the standards that came off the submarines
that were used for navigation (and other!) purposes.
About once a quarter someone would get the choice
assignment of driving down to Washington DC to NIST
to get them calibrated.
About 5 years ago I actually saw one at a hamfest for
sale for real cheap. When I picked it up to look it
over I realized why it was so cheap. Something was
rattling around in there and I didn't want to go any
further in my examination. One of these days I'll buy one,
but it is real low on my priority list somewhere behind
the stuff I am aquiring for my brewery! :-D
Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg
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The problem is, just buying your own atomic clock won't make you know the exact time. Have you ever wondered why Coordinated Universal time is called Coordinated? Well, I don't know. It could either be because it's generated by multiple atomic clocks around the word that are synchronized together. Or it could be because it's syncronized by leap seconds to the cosmologic time defined by two trees of Valinor (the relevation of the Sun around the Earth since the reforms).
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