On 2 Jan 2007 at 12:40, Warner Losh wrote:
> The interval math in UTC that's hard today would be significantly
> harder with rubber seconds. But it is just software, eh?
>
> In short, it is an interestingly naive idea that was tried in the
> 1960's and failed when there were only dozens of high precision time
> users rather than the hundreds of thousands there are today.
Actually, "rubber seconds" were what were in use for centuries, as
the time calibrated to astronomical observations, with the second
defined in terms of the length of a solar day, was what was in use
(or, actually, a very rough approximation of it given the lack of
accuracy of timepieces in the pre-atomic era). What was tried
unsuccessfully in the 1960s was to actually define such timekeeping
in a rigorous scientific way allowing conversion to and from atomic
time.
--
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Received on Tue Jan 02 2007 - 17:39:51 PST