[LEAPSECS] leap seconds schedule prior to 1972

[John Sauter]

On Tue, 2016-04-12 at 07:58 -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 8:17 AM, John Sauter <John_Sauter at systemeyesc
> omputerstore.com> wrote:
> > I have proposed a schedule of leap seconds prior to 1972 based on
> > the
> > Earth's rotation rate, which was deduced from ancient observations
> > of
> > the Sun and Moon.  The complete paper is available on my web site,
> > at 
> > 
> > https://www.systemeyescomputerstore.com/proleptic_UTC.pdf.
> > 
> > I would be grateful for any criticism, particularly any suggestions
> > for
> > improving the paper.  It is my goal to publish this paper on
> > arXiv.org,
> > perhaps in the astro-ph section.
> > 
> > Here is the abstract:
> > 
> > Using ancient observations of the Sun and Moon, construct a time
> > scale
> > using the modern definition of Coordinated Universal Time to cover
> > the
> > past 3,000 years. Use the 20th century portion of that time scale
> > to
> > construct a table of leap seconds from 1900 through 1971 for NTP.
> I both love and hate this.
> 
> I love it because the rules are clear and mechanical. This means
> that it can be implemented relatively easily in code. I'd prefer
> simpler
> rules, but it's a lot better than the 'surprise' model we have today.
> It
> also show just how crazy leap seconds are given the crazy number
> of leap seconds needed (see years -1000's for example).
> 
> I hate it because nobody did it. It's a complete artificial construct
> that's different from modern UTC. Modern UTC isn't so neat. There's
> ambiguity with when a leap second could occur. Do you schedule
> an early leap second when DUT1 is just a niggle over a positive
> second keeping DUT1 in the range -.9 to .1 mostly. Or do you wait
> 6 months and schedule it when DUT1 is approaching .5 to keep
> DUT1 in the range -.5 to .5. Or do you wait even longer until it's
> almost up to +.9 and thus tend to be -.1 to .9. The Proleptic UTC
> in this paper has none of this complexity.
> 
> It is quite interesting, though. I didn't think I'd find anything I'd
> like
> about it at all, but after reading it, this does seem to take all the
> crazy into what an ancient UTC would look like.
> 
> If it were me, I'd not worry about the license. If you are publishing
> it in arXiv.org, you'll already establish priority. The license seems
> to be a needless complication and barrier to adoption in this case.
> But that's just me....
> 
> Warner

Thank you, Warner.  With UTC, there is an authority which decides when
we will have a leap second.  To project UTC back in time, we need a
similar authority, and I nominated myself for that role.

The license is there to reassure anyone thinking about building on the
work that I will not complain about copyright infringement.  I
understand it is one of the licenses that asXiv.org accepts.  Notice
that I included the source LaTeX file.
    John Sauter (John_Sauter at systemeyescomputerstore.com)

-- 
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9A0B 511E

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