On Tue 2013-01-08T20:27:38 +0000, David Malone hath writ: > http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwmalone/time/leap2012/ntp-leapbits.png > > The peak that looks like it is at the start of 2013 does seem to > correspond to a bunch of servers advertising a bogus leap second.
This is a lament about the demise of the word "coordinated". In August of 1959 in the UK the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the National Physical Laboratory, and the General Post Office, and in the US the agencies of the US Naval Observatory, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the National Bureau of Standards agreed "to co-ordinate the time and frequency transmissions" beginning in 1960 where "the co-ordination plan operates within the framework of the IAU and the CCIR." The word "co-ordinate" was the same word used to describe the already operational collaboration between the US and UK to share the work of producing their national ephemerides beginning with the version for 1960. During the next year other nations joined and the BIH was given responsibility for the effort. At the beginning of 1964 Bernard Guinot used the French version of the term coordinated universal time in the BIH Bulletin Horaire, but in his book he indicates that he did not coin the phrase. No decision by the CCIR used the term Coordinated Universal Time until 1974. The way I see it "co-ordinated" meant that the US and UK almanac offices were working together even though there was no statutory requirement for them to do so. Following that came the coordination by the various national time bureaus. What I see now is that instead of a few expert agencies, the distribution of time is now in the hands of many who do not have deep expertise and who are not coordinating their efforts, yet they call what they are providing "UTC". -- Steve Allen <s...@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs