Facinated by BBC clocks and their accuracies

[Saturlight]

When I was a kid, around 11 years old, I used to love listening to the Jimmy Young show.

Jim used to give time checks often, and he also gave way at the top of every hour to the BBC Pips.

I was fascinated by the accuracy of Jim's clock. I saw him in a documentary programme in 1976 of him presenting his show on the radio, and it showed his BBC clock. It was white and looked like the sort of clock you'd hang in your kitchen.

No way did it look like it would keep the time to the second, but it did, and this was before Quartz. It must have been electrical or something, but it wasn't atomic.

Oh I wished I had a clock like that when I was a kid.

 

[spiney]

In days past, the BBC used Gents master/slave clock systems, that sent 1 Hz pulses round the building from master to slave clocks. Kept perfect time. The same systems were used in schools, to ring the bell at preset times (you might remember the same white clock on your classroom wall!).

The master clock could be synchronised to a time reference, the BBC used GMT pulses via landline from the National Physical Laboratory (not any more, now the Beeb has its own atomic clock, just don't tell George W Bush ... !).

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/Pulsynetic/index.jhtml .

 

[rkhsaw]

in those days, "crashing" over the last pip was vertually a sackable offence. Back queing discs up to the hour was done with military precision.

 

[Saturlight]

in those days, "crashing" over the last pip was vertually a sackable offence. Back queing discs up to the hour was done with military precision.

When Noel Edmonds was "hip" in the late 1970s, he played a game with the BBC Pips, lining them up like kids at school in a line, to pip.

Six pips, with the longest pip at the end. Sometimes that last pip cheekily came second or third.O-Ha :-bash