on 3/5/02 8:24 PM, James R. Frysinger at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Who among us is so schedule driven to
> worry about 0.9 s?

It has nothing to do with daily schedules, but, if you want to know who
needs to be concerned with a 0.9 s error in measuring the time of day, there
are some "among us" who do.

Those who guide Space shuttle to rendevous with orbiting Hubble telescopes
do.

Those who use GPS systems to locate ourselves or others depend on the
manufacturers and programmers to know it that precisely so that the
information we get will be correct.

Then there are many others who need to know other times measurements (other
than "time of day") to that accuracy.

And, even if we limit ourselves only to time of day measurements, it needs
to be pointed out that when a 0.9 s of error acumulates in the time of day,
if we do NOT correct for it, the error will continue to accumulate until
there ARE big enough errors that even avergage, non-technical citizens might
have to worry about it. The history of our calendar involves small errors
that people did not think important enough to worry about for a long time,
until the accumulated error added up to days and weeks.

Regards
Bill Hooper

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