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Re: Watches as chronometers
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2013 Jun 09, 16:32 -0700
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2013 Jun 09, 16:32 -0700
In my monthly clock error log I have never found an elegant way to account for a leap second. It requires special handling, and every time I have to think carefully since these events happen infrequently. For instance, one of my entries from 2012 is 07-01 162748 1/4 1628 + leap sec -11 3/4 +.52 Translation: at July 1 16:27:48 1/4 UTC (clock time), the correct UTC was exactly 16:28. A leap second occurred between this log entry and the previous one. Clock error with respect to UTC is -11 1/4 second. The mean daily rate since the previous entry is +.52 s/day. That rate is computed as if clock error is (algebraically) 1 s less than the actual error to eliminate the spurious gain due to the leap second. Of course the clock did gain an extra second relative to UTC, but that was an artifact of the time scale. I want to exclude that from my analysis of clock behavior. --
