[LEAPSECS] the epoch of TAI, with no more doubt

[Tom Van Baak]

> The epoch at which TAI was set is definitely 1961-01-01T20:00:00 UT2
> 
> https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/taiepoch.html

I'm curious how your findings compare with this random link I ran across [1]:

https://koka-lang.github.io/koka/doc/std_time_utc.html

See especially section "1.3. UTC before 1961"

and also the link:
https://books.google.com/books?id=uJ4JhGJANb4C&lpg=PA87&vq=wwv&pg=PA87#v=onepage&q=wwv&f=false

Give it some thought. I don't have a quick answer and would appreciate your input. If you've ever worked with raw UTC(k) data, present or historical, you know there's no one right time. So in the late 1950's, making claims about Paris vs. Washington / Gaithersburg / Boulder might not be as clear as you hope.

In my home museum the earliest cesium standard is 9,192,631,840 Hz not 9,192,631,770 [2]. I've learned that re-interpreting international time & frequency history is not always simple.

/tvb

[1] I don't necessarily endorse this page; having not spent enough time with it. As a serious hands-on atomic clock experimenter I am often repelled by arm-chair software engineers who try to recreate time & frequency standards history with their table lookups and pretend proleptic extrapolations.

[2] http://leapsecond.com/museum/nc2001/freq2.jpg
via http://leapsecond.com/museum/nc2001/