[LEAPSECS] leapsecond history

[Tom Van Baak]

I'm not sure how many of you are still interested in the early history of atomic time and leap seconds. But I ran across a wonderful old article by Essen on leap seconds, eventually found the magazine on eBay, and scanned it as part of my primary sources collection.

http://leapsecond.com/history/1981-essen-leap-second.htm

It's a good read, even more so now that it's 30 years old and the debate continues.

"it took 16 years to get international agreement on the details"
"there was still strong opposition from astronomers"
"considerable vested interest in retaining astronomical time as the definitive system"
"no doubt that we must change to atomic time, just not before we retire, please"

/tvb
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/leapsecs/attachments/20131121/73e331ad/attachment.htm>