On Jan 13, 2014, at 7:49 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > Brooks Harris <bro...@edlmax.com> wrote: > >> You are saying that UTC as a term for the adjusted timescale existed as >> the process of time-keeping in computers began and they intended >> computers to reflect "civil time" even if the details of exactly how to >> do that hadn't been worked out. "Modern" UTC, UTC with Leap Seconds >> after 1972, hadn't yet started, so it wasn't considered. > > The development was concurrent, not sequential. Unix 1st and 2nd edition > had a 1971 epoch and 1/60th second resolution. 3rd edition moved the epoch > to 1972. (The overall manual was dated Feb 1973 and the page for time(2) > was dated March 1972.) The 4th edition introduced modern Unix time. > (Overall manual dated November 1973, and time(2) dated August 1973.) > > So UTC had started but wasn't available to the computers that Unix was > running on.
The precision of the time in Unix was sub-second, but given all accounts of the time, and my experience with systems a decade later, I'd be very much surprised if the accuracy of the system time was better than sub-minute since a synchronization Dennis' wrist-watch was involved. Given how well computers I used in the early 80's maintained time, I'd imagine the synchronization a decade earlier likely was a regular occurrence... Warner _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
