[LEAPSECS] article for Metrologia

[Steve Allen]

On Sat 2022-10-29T13:48:19-0400 Joseph Gwinn hath writ:
> So, those faulty designers of yore had insufficient clairvoyance
> skills.

Not the fault of the designers.

The Time Lords who incepted leap seconds were caught between
conflicting legal requirements.  They had no choice, or rather, no
choice other than to risk becoming part of another another Ides of
March scenario in international timekeeping.  Their lack of choice
included preventing their dilemma from appearing in official
documents.  They knew that leap seconds were technically barren and
that no other legal option was possible to implement at that time.
This is why Winkler limited himself to paraphrasing Mr. Spock while
directing that the USNO navigational broadcast systems would shift
from old UTC to TAI-10.  The need for purely atomic time was evident
more than 50 years ago, but the ability to implement it correctly
was not yet technically possible.  So the principals guarded their
speech into their retirement and death rather than advocate that
the leap second scheme was necessarily temporary and would need to
be replaced by something better.

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