I still prefer a wristwatch though...

An atomic clock at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has the best long-term accuracy of any in the world, research has found.

Interesting, but since when do FRANKFURT AM MAIN & BRAUNSCHWEIG belong to SWITZERLAND ????
"" Sie sehen hier die absolut exakte Uhrzeit.
Das Zeitsignal stammt von der Atomuhr der Physikalisch Technischen Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig (Deutschland). """

So, please correct the title of your post right now immediately as it has to be """" British beat the Germans at time keeping" and if you do not until 20.00 tonight, I will sue you for CHF 1.5 mio

Sure beats a Swatch if you ask me...

The Brits made a caesium fountain clock, but the Swiss were a bit of a disadvantage as they made a chocolate fountain instead, which doesn't work so well and ends up in a sticky time for everyone.

Time is relative; it all depends if the clock is at the bottom of the fountain or the top

In 1962, scientists placed two atomic clocks at the bottom and top of a water tower. The clock at the bottom, the one closer to the massive center of the Earth, was running slower than the clock at the top. Einstein called this phenomenon time dilation.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/sci...-dilation1.htm

Which is funny because I thought it had something to do with the doppler effect and trains



But in any case the common factor in time, I deduce to be trumpets and trains, both of which have always been of utmost importance in Swiss and English societies.

A brief history of Western timekeeping:

-French monk makes a clock for the Germans
-Germans make primitive pocket watches
-French and English watchmakers start making very sophisticated and precise watches
-Switzerland makes cheap unreliable watches
-England reluctantly becomes home of the best watchmaker in the world (reluctantly because the dude with the genius happened to be a tradesman... a carpenter of all things )
-Switzerland is slowly making better watches, but anyone who's anyone knows to buy French or English (even Breguet, from Neuchatel, knew he'd best make and sell his wares in Paris)
-England keeps on being the best
...

-a Yank appears!
-Americans figure out how to make watches
-two weeks later, half a dozen watch factories spring up in the U.S.A.
-a month later they've devised and built machinery that will mass produce watches that rival the very best handmade stuff from Europe.
-France and England refuse to believe that the Yank stuff is so good
-Switzerland keeps getting better... making stuff for the English now (to put their name on )
-Switzerland, with no pride to swallow, eagerly learns how the Yanks do it
-CH improves on what's now 50 year old Yank technology
-French and English watchmaking goes into rapid decline
...

-a wristwatch appears!
-Yanks, proud like the Limeys and Frogs before them refuse to acknowledge these 'chick watches'
-Switzerland decimates and then obliterates all competition
-Nicolas Hayek dies
...

-a Chinese tourbillon appears!

Leave it to Hewlett Packard...





His arm was skinny when he bought it .

Most people I know now don't bother with watches, they just look at their phones.

Those phones ARE watches

How accurate is the time on GSM cellphones? CDMA phones have millisecond accuracy (part of the standard, if I understand correctly). I have no idea whether (or how) GSM cell phones without a GPS chip get their time; my cheapo special from M-Budget Mobile had to have the time reset quite often during my seven week stay.

Is there a Swiss equivalent of the Royal Observatory or the U.S. Naval Observatory where the official time for the country is kept? Or do they just get the time from Greenwich?

It's network time, supplied by the operator, updated periodically. Same as your PC. Local clock fluctuations are corrected about once a day.

Perhaps FOCS1



FOCS 1, a continuous cold caesium fountain atomic clock in Switzerland, started operating in 2004 at an uncertainty of one second in 30 million years

• Classification Clock
• Industry Telecommunications, Science
• Application GPS
• Fuel Source Electricity
• Powered Yes
• Inventor US National Bureau of Standards
• Invented 1949

I go by the sun!It`s overcast,thats why I am still in bed

Hmm, my cheapo special from the same place was accurate - time didn't slip long enough for me to notice in the year or so that I had it (before my step-father passed on an 'old' one he had lying around that was a million times more advanced).

Living in Zurich, I find it hard to understand why the Swiss bothered developing such precise watches when you can get line-of-sight on a tower clock every 500 metres or so ... and even in villages up the valleys, you can see the church tower (usually with a clock!) from most of the fields and mountains around about ...

My phone watches me, which is kind of creepy.

Yup. Most timepieces these days can multi-task.
I have this clock in the kitchen that cooks my meals. The clock in the living room plays DVDs and the clock in my pocket makes phone calls. My most expensive clock is also my fastest. I like it because it gets me from A to B.

Aren't watches just useless pieces of jewellery? They don't do anything but tell you the time and date. I haven't worn one in years.

Bovet, from Fleurier, who trained in London - was the first to start selling watches to China, around 1820- always sold in pairs.
My dad had a wonderful enameled pair of Bovet watches in its original box, but they 'disappeared' in sad circumstances (a friend with debts).

Of course the worst clock is the one waiting at the door when you get in...

"...and what bloody time do you call this ???"


Geez, I mean what sort of a clock asks *you* the time ???

It's funny. Last week there was one person in my group, who while priding herself on how timely the Swiss are, managed to be 10-30 minutes late for EVERYTHING.