Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: Program to set clock to NBS time
Message-ID: <1991Jan1.020756.24177@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 1 Jan 91 02:07:56 GMT
References: <38@teqsoft.UUCP> <4042@dah.sub.org> <1990Dec30.233403.28@eagle.inesc.pt>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Followup-To: alt.sources.d
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources (ncoast)
Lines: 30

As quoted from <1990Dec30.233403.28@eagle.inesc.pt> by jmc@eagle.inesc.pt (Miguel Casteleiro):
+---------------
| Who is behind this service (U. S. Naval Observatory)?
| Is it connected to an atomic clock?
| What is the first number for (48253)?
| What does UTC stands for (Universal Coordinated Time)?
| And yes, it would be nice to have a similar service here in Europe.
+---------------

The U.S. Naval Observatory runs this service, and yes, it's driven by an
atomic clock.

My guess is the first number is a "Julian date" of some sort; that is, days
since some "epoch" time.  Not having a decent date calculator around, I can't
sanity-check by trying to figure day 1 (the calendar we use fits years well
but is worthless for day calculations...)  However, it looks to be sometime
around 1858, for what it's worth.

Yes, UTC is Coordinated Universal Time (as usual, the abbreviation is
scrambled --- I suspect it came out of Geneva).

While I don't have any details, many X.25 services in Europe and BT's X.25 in
England have similar services.  Ask around.

++Brandon
-- 
Me: Brandon S. Allbery			    VHF/UHF: KB8JRR on 220, 2m, 440
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