Accuracy,Timekeeping,Clocks,an computer Accuracy in Timekeeping, Clocks and their Development

Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc ----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;mso-para-margin-top:0cm;mso-para-margin-right:0cm;mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;mso-para-margin-left:0cm;line-height:115%;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}Time has always beenimportant to civilisations throughout history, despite the fact that it is onlynow, in the modern age that we have come to some understanding of what time is.The telling of timehas always been important, particularly to our agricultural past, when identifyingevents such as what day on the calendar to plant crops or knowing how long leftuntil nightfall, was crucial.Our systems of tellingthe time have always been based around the movement of the Earth. A year isdefined as a complete orbit of the Sun whilst a day is a single revolution ofour planet.This solar and lunar methodof time telling is fundamental for the way we live our lives, there is no pointon having a system of time that would allow days to drift in to nights and viceversa.Time telling was verybasic until the middle-ages when the first mechanical clocks appeared inEurope. Before this time basic water clocks, sundials and other rudimentarytimers were the only method of keeping track of the hours as they past.The first mechanicalclocks were not very accurate and relied on a verge-and-foliotescapement (a gear system that advancing the gear train at regular intervals or'ticks'), but soon new technologies such as the pendulum meant that clocksbecame ever increasingly accurate.The next big step-forwardin time-keeping came with the development of the crystal oscillator in thefirst part of the twentieth century. These new electronic clocks were far moreaccurate than their mechanical counter-parts as they relied on a vibrating crystal(often quartz) that oscillated when an electrical current was passed through.Although clocks becamesmaller and more sophisticated, true accuracy would not be achieved until thedevelopment of atomic clocks in the 1950’s. The atomic clock used the resonanceof individual atoms (in most cases caesium) which had such an exact oscillationof 9,192,631,770 every second that the International System of Units (SI)defined a second as that number of oscillations of the caesium atom.In fact whileelectronic clocks may lose a second every week or so, atomic clocks will not losea second within several millions of years. This increasedaccuracy, however, has proved to cause some problems. Because of this accuracyit was soon discovered that the Earth’s rotation, that which we had based oursystem of time on for millennia was in not as accurate as our clocks.Because of the gravityof the Earth’s moon, the Earth slows down gradually each year. while thisslowing of the Earth’s spin is less than a second a year, if it wasn’taccounted for eventually day would slip into night and vice versa (albeit inseveral millennia) rendering a system of time useless.The only solution hasbeen to include extra seconds every year or so on to the InternationalTimescale (known as UTC or Coordinated Universal Time).  These Leap Seconds as they are called are seenby some as a fudge in keeping time accurate and they wish to abolish them whileothers (including the world’s astronomers) argue they are essential in keepingtrack of night and day.There are plenty ofways of keeping accurate time; the best solution is to use a dedicated NTPserver to receive a time signal from an atomic clock time transmission eithervia a radio signal or the GPS system. Dedicated wall clocks and Ethernet clocksare also available that can receive a time from an atomic clock.