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Atomic Clocks

An atomic clock is a type of clock that uses an atomic resonance frequency standard as its timekeeping element. They are the most accurate time and frequency standards known, and are used as primary standards for international time distribution services, to control the frequency of television broadcasts, and in global navigation satellite systems such as GPS.

Atomic clocks do not use radioactivity, but rather the precise microwave signal that electrons in atoms emit when they change energy levels. Early atomic clocks were based on masers. Currently, the most accurate atomic clocks are based on absorption spectroscopy of cold atoms in atomic fountains such as the NIST-F1.

National standards agencies maintain an accuracy of 10−9 seconds per day (approximately 1 part in 1014), and a precision set by the radio transmitter pumping the maser. The clocks maintain a continuous and stable time scale, International Atomic Time (TAI). For civil time, another time scale is disseminated, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC is derived from TAI, but synchronized, by using leap seconds, to UT1, which is based on actual rotations of the earth with respect to the solar time.

he idea of using atomic vibration to measure time was first suggested by Lord Kelvin in 1879. The practical method for doing this became magnetic resonance, developed in the 1930s by Isidor Rabi.[1] The first atomic clock was an ammonia maser device built in 1949 at the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now NIST). It was less accurate than existing quartz clocks, but served to demonstrate the concept.[2] The first accurate atomic clock, a caesium standard based on a certain transition of the caesium-133 atom, was built by Louis Essen in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.[3] Calibration of the caesium standard atomic clock was carried out by the use of the astronomical time scale ephemeris time (ET).[4] This led to the internationally agreed definition of the latest SI second being based on atomic time. Equality of the ET second with the (atomic clock) SI second has been verified to within 1 part in 1010.[5] The SI second thus inherits the effect of decisions by the original designers of the ephemeris time scale, determining the length of the ET second.

 

 

May 2009- JILA's strontium optical atomic clock is now the world's most accurate clock based on neutral atoms. Shining a blue laser onto ultracold strontium atoms in an optical trap tests how efficiently a previous burst of light from a red laser has boosted the atoms to an excited state. Only those atoms that remain in the lower energy state respond to the blue laser, causing the fluorescence seen here. Photo credit: Sebastian Blatt, JILA, University of Colorado[6]

Since the beginning of development in the 1950s, atomic clocks have been made based on the hyperfine (microwave) transitions in hydrogen-1, caesium-133, and rubidium-87. The first commercial atomic clock was the Atomichron, manufactured by National Company. More than 50 were sold between 1956 and 1960. This bulky and expensive machine was subsequently replaced by much smaller rack-mountable devices, such as the Hewlett-Packard model 5060 caesium frequency standard, released in 1964.[1]

In the late 1990s four factors contributed to major advances in clocks:[7]

▪ Laser cooling and trapping of atoms

▪ So-called high-finesse Fabry–Pérot cavities for narrow laser line widths

▪ Precision laser spectroscopy

▪ Convenient counting of optical frequencies using optical combs

In August 2004, NIST scientists demonstrated a chip-scaled atomic clock.[8] According to the researchers, the clock was believed to be one-hundredth the size of any other. It was also claimed that it requires just 75 mW, making it suitable for battery-driven applications. This device could conceivably become a consumer product.

In March 2008, physicists at NIST demonstrated a quantum logic clock based on individual mercury and aluminium ions. These two clocks are the most accurate that have been constructed to date, with neither clock gaining nor losing at a rate that would exceed a second in over a billion years.[9]

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