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Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4408
Buried on page 25 of the 2019 budget proposal for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), under the heading "Fundamental Measurement, Quantum Science, and Measurement Dissemination", there's a short entry that has caused plenty of debate and even a fair deal of anger among those in the amateur radio scene:
NIST will discontinue the dissemination of the U.S. time and frequency via the NIST radio stations in Hawaii and Ft. Collins, CO. These radio stations transmit signals that are used to synchronize consumer electronic products like wall clocks, clock radios, and wristwatches, and may be used in other applications like appliances, cameras, and irrigation controllers.
The NIST stations in Hawaii and Colorado are the home of WWV, WWVH, and WWVB. The oldest of these stations, WWV, has been broadcasting in some form or another since 1920; making it the longest continually operating radio station in the United States. Yet in order to save approximately $6.3 million, these time and frequency standard stations are potentially on the chopping block.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/20/what-will-you-do-if-wwvb-goes-silent/
(Score: 5, Informative) by martyb on Monday August 27 2018, @11:43AM (2 children)
There are literally millions of devices still in use, and still on sale, that make use of WWVB.
For example, here is a selection of radio-controlled watches from Seiko USA (Javascript required) [seikousa.com] and Citizen USA (91 models!) [citizenwatch.com]. New models are still being released. I don't know about you, but if I just dropped several hundred dollars on a new watch, which kept perfect time through synchronizing with the atomic clock signal broadcast on WWVB, and that time source went away, I'd be very unhappy.
Or, the watch that I bought a few years ago, and that has been keeping perfect time ever since, suddenly became inaccurate? Yeah, not a happy camper.
Let's hope it is just push back from the NIST selecting the most obvious, outcry-inducing candidate for a budget cut target so that they are able to resist having their budget squeezed.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Tuesday August 28 2018, @04:07AM
I couldn't agree more or more strongly.
Being that I use atomic-signal-synching talking clocks to keep time, I'd be left with a house full of clocks that were suddenly rendered inaccurate & eventually worthless.
I'd be rather displeased if I have to go back to trying to manually setting clocks again, especially now that it takes so much freakin' longer to set each one.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:59PM
Cynical career bureaucrats doing this again, you mean:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome [wikipedia.org]