[LEAPSECS] the demise of "coordinated"

[Steve Allen]

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                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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