[time-nuts] Why not TAI?

[Bruce Griffiths]

Magnus Danielson wrote:
> On 10/08/11 09:16, Bruce Griffiths wrote:
>> Attila Kinali wrote:
>>> On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 05:57:45 +0000
>>> "Poul-Henning Kamp"<phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Everybody but the time-lords have always been told to stay away from
>>>> TAI in the strongest possible terms by said time-lords, who again and
>>>> told the world to use UTC.
>>> May i ask what the reason was to stay away from TAI?
>>> I mean, it is obvious (for me) that for any application that needs
>>> a steady, continious and monotone clock that TAI is one of the best
>>> alternatives among all those time standards.
>>>
>>> Attila Kinali
>> Strictly TAI, as presently realised, is a paper clock that isn't
>> actually available in real time.
>
> This is not entierly true. There are a few national laboratories which 
> has a local representation of TAI, alongside their UTC. It is handy to 
> say that TAI is a paper clock, but it is a comparable scale.
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
>
>
These "local'' versions of TAI -TAI(NPL), TAI(NIST) etc, are also paper 
ensemble averages and only a coarse approximation of them is available 
in real time.


Bruce