[time-nuts] Determination of the placement of the first pps

[Bob Bownes]

As I am, as Heinlein would say, but an egg in terms of time-nuttery,
perhaps someone could point me toward some history in order to help answer
a question recently posed to me.

At what point was the original global 1pps leading (trailing?) edge
defined/distributed and to what was (is) it referenced? Someone, someplace,
had to give the original time 'hack', no?

I found I could talk about all the wonderfullness of GPSDOs, rubidiums,
ocxo's and the like but couldn't answer that simple question with much more
depth than 'NIST does it for the US' or 'you pull it off of the GPS'.

Thanks,
Bob