[time-nuts] Seiko watch "leap second enabled"

[Hal Murray]

mikes at flatsurface.com said:
> Why 6/1 and 12/1? Leap seconds can happen any month. June and December are
> only a preference. 

Yes, but it's a very strong preference.  My reading is that they will use Jun 
and Dec as long as they can keep within a second.

Are there any interesting estimates on when that will stop working?  How does 
that compare to the lifetime of a watch or a software package?

Tom recently said the decay is 2 ms/day per century.  We are interested in 2 
sec per year.  That's 5.5 ms/year.  So only 2 or 3 centuries.  I won't be 
alive, but I'll bet some of our artifacts will still be around.  I wonder 
what software will look like then.


> Sounds like the world's first fundamentally flawed "leap second enabled"
> watch. 

Sounds like a good reason to put one in a museum.  I wonder if it will still 
be working when the first bug happens.  Will GPS still be transmitting?  Will 
the batteries it needs still be available?  (Maybe time to stash a few in the 
freezer.)



-- 
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