[time-nuts] Three subjects.

Jim Miller timenuts at jcmco.com
Tue Jan 3 16:20:17 EST 2006


On Jan 3, 2006, at 3:32 PM, Dennis O'Keefe wrote:

> The Accutron was advertised to be accurate to a minute a month.  
> Mine was +47
> 1/2 seconds at the end of the month. I no longer have that watch.

My father used to work at a small (200 MW) municipal power plant and  
when I was young (1970s) I would occasionally go along with him to  
work. They had a Telechron clock and an Accutron right next to each  
other in the control room next to the synchroscope meter for each  
boiler/generator unit. The Telechron with its synchronous AC motor  
was hooked to the generator main output and the Accutron was  
naturally a "standalone" device.  When off the grid they would trim  
the steam throttles to adjust the frequency of their generators to  
make the Telechron stay in agreement with the Accutron. Once it was  
time to go back on the grid they would use the synchroscope to assure  
that they were in phase with the grid.  As you can imagine it would  
be a very, very bad day if they were to close the tie breaker to the  
grid while out of phase. The accutron / telechron arrangement was to  
keep the clocks in the town accurate during the off-grid interval.

Jim





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