Re: [time-nuts] Used Hydrogen Maser, and Mercury Stored-Ion Clocks

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <009b66fe-c0b0-4f80-8a79-4a487dcb0...@yahoo.com>, Demetrios Matsakis
 via time-nuts writes:

> Demetrios Matsakis, as of this Saturday a USNO retiree, and as of August 1 a 
> consultant for Masterclock.

Do Time Lords get to keep their TARDIS in retirement ?

Best wishes for the "3rd age"!

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp   | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

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Re: [time-nuts] Used Hydrogen Maser, and Mercury Stored-Ion Clocks

[Demetrios Matsakis via time-nuts]

For what it’s worth, the mercury ion clocks were shipped to the US Naval 
Observatory.  HP shortly thereafter did a market survey and concluded there was 
not enough profit in it.   They did allow Len and Robin to give short-answer 
support, and the project fell to me.   I found the clocks were not performing 
well due to sudden vacuum-contamination events.   Len, Robin, and I published 
our data in the proceedings of the 1995 Frequency Control Symposium.  At about 
the same time, JPL came up with a second generation design.   They kept 
improving it, and 20 years later this is now the Deep Space Atomic Clock, which 
was just launched.  See https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/clock/index.html 
  and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Atomic_Clock 


As for costs for an unit that is not space-qualified, I would guess you still 
need a lab with PhD’s and skilled technicians because I doubt much of the 
hardware is commercially available.

Demetrios Matsakis, as of this Saturday a USNO retiree, and as of August 1 a 
consultant for Masterclock.

> FWIW, about 20 years ago, Len Cutler and Robin Giffard of 5071A fame
> built several Hg ion clocks to be shipped to some govt customer I
> don't remember.  One of the clocks was dropped by the shipping company
> UPS or FedEX) and destroyed.  Only then did Len learn that HP was
> self insured, probably as part of a package deal to get a low
> corporate shipping rate.  HP products were packed extremely well, so
> the only real risk was the unit getting stolen.  I vaguely remember
> Len saying they were out $10K, which was probably just the cost of
> parts.  Nevertheless, it didn't seem like building an Hg clock was
> all that big of a project.  Way simpler than the 5071A.
> Now a days, the electronics would be considerably easier and cheaper. 
> The mechanical parts would all be CNC'ed by an online machine shop.
> 
> Rick N6RK
> 

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