[time-nuts] 1937 Time Standard

[Tom Van Baak]

Hi Thomas,

> I was wondering if anyone knew what the "state of the art" time standard was in the 1937 ?

The 1930's were an exciting time in this regard.

The best time standards (in vacuum pendulum clocks) were those used by astronomers. Google: Shortt-Synchronome.

Laboratory quartz clocks had just been developed. During this decade the best pendulum clocks were compared to the best quartz clocks. Google: Marrison Loomis Shortt

And in the race between these two technologies, it was shown in 1936 by Scheibe and Adelsberger that irregularities seen by astronomers were due to the earth itself and not the pendulum or quartz clocks. This eventually led to the leap second. It was common to use a set of 3 clocks to do the comparison (sound familiar)

To get a sense of the world of precise time in the 1930's I would recommend reading the following, each of which mentions something about the past century of timekeeping.

The Evolution of the Quartz Crystal Clock
http://www.ieee-uffc.org/main/history-marrison.asp
https://ia902701.us.archive.org/25/items/bstj27-3-510/bstj27-3-510.pdf

Time – the SI Base Unit “Second”, by Andreas Bauch
https://www.ptb.de/cms/fileadmin/internet/fachabteilungen/abteilung_4/4.4_zeit_und_frequenz/pdf/2012_Bauch_PTBM_125a_en.pdf

The Evolution of Time Measurement, Part 2: Quartz Clocks
http://tf.boulder.nist.gov/general/pdf/2533.pdf

Atomichron: The Atomic Clock from Concept to Commercial Product
http://www.ieee-uffc.org/main/history-atomichron.asp

Precision time and the rotation of the Earth, by Dennis McCarthy
http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FIAU%2FIAU2004_IAUC196%2FS1743921305001377a.pdf

Some Aspects of Precision Time Measurement -- 1930's German quartz, Lothar Rohde, etc.
http://pubs-newcomen.com/tfiles/75ap119.pdf
http://www.cdvandt.org/PTR%20quartz-clock.pdf
http://www.cdvandt.org/CFQ.pdf
http://www.cdvandt.org/BIOS-1316.pdf

I have more links and PDF's to share. But let's first find out how deep an answer you actually want.

Thanks,
/tvb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas D. Erb" <tde at electrictime.com>
To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2016 11:40 AM
Subject: [time-nuts] 1937 Time Standard


>I was wondering if anyone knew what the "state of the art" time standard was in the 1937 ?
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> 
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