Hi Patrick,
In the picture is a four time zone wall clock (also many years old), a kit built Nixie Tube clock (using IN 14 tubes) and in the lower center one of my most beloved clocks. The true Time Geeks may be able to identify it, it is a TrueTime TL-3 WWV shortwave radio clock.
Yes they are still out there and running. The TL-3 runs ‘synchronized’ almost the entire day, even way out here on the New England coast. Not in this photo is a ‘rack’ of various GPS based time servers/clocks. They are two TrueTime XL-AK’s, a Symmetricom S250i (IRIG synchronized) and a Masterclock MRC1000 time server. And just to really expose my obsession there are several Masterclock TCD 26 time displays scattered throughout the house driven by one of the XL-AK GPS clocks providing IRIG-B. Yes, a true time geek.
The ‘GC1000’ photo is my oldest, and dearest, clock a Heathkit GC1000. I purchased it six months after introduction, a great expense at the time. It has been maintained and upgraded many times over the years. It runs “Hi Spec” more often than not. To the left of the GC1000 is an active shortwave antenna control box; this antenna facilitates such reliable reception.
The ‘new_clock’ photo replaces the Raspberry Pi driving the screen with my new Geochron Digital Atlas 4K. A tremendous upgrade.
The ‘rack’ photo is a part of my collection of time and frequency instruments. The top unit is a Masterclock MCR1000 Network Time Server (newest of the bunch), a ‘low cost’ unit of which I have deployed 100’s in the systems I used to design. The second unit is a Symmetricom S250i, IRIG-B synchronized Network Time Server. These were much more expensive than the MCR, hence why we moved to the MCR. The two bottom units are TrueTime XL-AK GPS Time and Frequency Receivers (the oldest, but arguably the best). I have deployed all these units literally around the world. The ‘TCD26’ photo is the time display in my basement office, it is synchronized to an XL-AK using IRIG-B. You can’t miss it, I just point when someone asks what time is it? I have five more of these units scattered around the house connected to IRIG-B by a coax that I have run to each display (what is the point of a time display it is not millisecond accurate…). From the top down of the stack we have EST, EST, GMT and EST. (OK EST is boring, but being retired my life is now much less complicated.)
I have recently retired but in my ‘working life’ I was a Computer Systems Architect, but my passion has always been accurate time. I spent the last 20 years building and maintaining a global time distribution hierarchy within the corporation (as a hobby that someone else funded if you will) but eventually ‘corporate’ caught on and it was adopted and taken over by enterprise IT. When I first started the CEO/Founder had a Geochron in his office, but it was his personal unit. I often tried to convince him to make a Geochron part of our standard datacenter deployment configuration, but once it got to the bean-counters it was always shot down. Oh well their loss.
Yours, Ronald Lussier
