| Atomic clocks burst into
the clock world three decades after quartz technology had revolutionalised
the clock industry. The cesium atom's natural frequency was formally recognized
as the new international unit of time in 1967:
This led to the timekeeping performance of quartz clocks
been substantially surpassed by atomic clocks.
How is this possible? Simple, atoms make up a potential "pendulum" which has a reproducible rate that sets the standard and it is transmitted via microwave and satellite technology for much better accurate clocks.
This led to the creation in 1972 of the International (UTC) Universal Time Co-ordinating Center
Today the Atomic Clock Systems from over 25 countries World-Wide and the USA, feed continous data to the UTC.
In the US, Radio signals beamed from the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Fort Collins, Colorado are received by Atomic clocks sold in the USA.
When the atomic clock is set once, it functions within the four time zones of the continental United States only, which will keep your atomic clock accurate to within a second over a million years. Never will you have to reset your atomic clock again, even for daylight-savings time, it's all done for you automatically.
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