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I don't know about watches, but there are certainly a lot of clocks (and
some pretty small ones, too) that synchronize themselves to WWV.  They
are available everywhere from Sharper Image to Radio Shack.  When I
taught USPS's celestial course and started talking about time sources,
the next week three or four of my students showed up with examples of
these clocks because I hadn't mentioned them.   Some of them are very
inexpensive (30~50 USD), way less than the cost of a decent shortwave
receiver capable of receiving WWV or CHU.

The synchronization signals are actually provided by WWVB, a very low
frequency companion to  WWV.   According to the WWV web site, WWVB
provides coverage for the contiguous 48 states (and therefore probably
also for southern Canada)

To the best of my knowledge, though, there's no way one can determine
time zone (or even summer (daylight) vs winter (standard) time) simply
from the WWVB signal.  If the Swatch watch was changing time zones, it
must have some additional geographic-location-determining device.

Lu Abel

Manson, John wrote:
> Now there is a toy I have to have....off to the www to get details
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Navigation Mailing List
> [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM] On Behalf Of Dan Allen
> Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 8:55 AM
> To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM
> Subject: Re: Cell phone time, etc
>
>
> On Apr 15, 2005, at 11:50 PM, Frank R wrote:
>
>
>>That is, do you get time zone changes as you drive along a highway?
>
>
> Yes I do, that is why I found it curious that I did not get DST updates
> without turning the phone on and off.
>
> Now I have a new toy: a Swatch watch which automatically tracks WWV
> stations and other unspecified satellite or cell tower sources to handle
> DST, time zones, and so forth.  It did not work too well as I crossed
> America by air yesterday until right before I landed - then the time
> zone changed from Eastern to Mountain.  I need more technical details
> about how it obtains position information (no GPS in it).
>
> Dan

   

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