Talk about a visceral memory!
I hope this doesn’t break all the NTP servers in Canada!
You think NTP servers are synched by … an audio time check?
National Research Council Canada presents:
Fast & Canadian: Clock Drift
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The National Research Council Time Signal, and the series of 800 Hz “pips” that preceded and followed the time-setting dash, worked its way into everyday rituals.
Human listeners, automated radio receivers at railways, shipping firms, and other entities, could set their mechanical clocks to it.
Another accuracy impediment was the switch to HD radio in 2018, which, a National Research Council (NRC) spokesperson told CBC, caused a delay of up to nine seconds in the time signal broadcast.
It was initially broadcast by shortwave channel CHU, announcing a time derived from pendulum clocks, backed up by astronomical observances.
It was initially a steady frequency, interrupted by the time in Morse code, but eventually included voiced announcements and digital audio.
Since the long-dash drop, stories have emerged of Canadian expats getting a taste of home by tuning in, of tea towels featuring the long dash, of people who trained their dogs to sit and wait for a treat when they heard the announcement.
The original article contains 656 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s weird how no one forced people to synchronize clocks over a streamed connection, but that’s the reason why they’re killing the entire thing. Something seems fishy here.
Maybe keep the signal around on radio, and just let everyone else go fuck themselves.
CBC is slowly killing their actual radio broadcasts in favour of streaming. The time signal doesn’t make sense on streaming, ergo, bye bye time signal.
The CBC isn’t even the responsibile party here. They just carried the signal because they already had a deployed network for it.
It’s still available on shortwave, if I understand correctly.
