June 19, 2000
What Time Is It (on the Internet)?
Tidbit Archive
| Time is of the essence. From sundials to atomic clocks, the Internet is awash in time- oriented sites. You can set your watch or synchronize your computer's internal clock. You can find out what time it is in Rarotonga or Ouagadougou. You can learn about the history of timekeeping. And you can explore new and imaginative concepts of time, including "the long now," (with a 10,000 year horizon) and Internet time (measured in "Swatch Beats"). The possibilities are limited only by your imagination--and how much time you have. |
Links:The U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) Time Service Department in Washington, D.C. Official time for the U.S. military.
USNO's "Master Clock Voice Announcer." A talking atomic clock, through the magic of RealAudio. If you like watching grass grow, this site is for you. (Ironically, because RealAudio operates with a time delay, it's at least 4 seconds slow.)
The Official U.S. Time from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Includes a very cool "geochron" map clock showing night and day around the world.
"A Walk Through Time," exhibit on the history of timekeeping, also from NIST.
PrimaSoft DateTime v1.3 -- a free utility for Windows 95, 98, and NT that sets the clock on your computer to your choice of several time standards.
The World Time Server. Find out what time it is anywhere in the world.
Greenwich2000. The mother of all time sources, world standard since 1884, located at Greenwich, England (0° longitude) gets its time from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Go figure.
Sundials on the Internet. Everything you always wanted to know about sundials and more. If this is not enough, you could try this remarkably long list of sundial links.
The Long Now Foundation, an organization devoted to stretching our time horizon, promoting "slower/better" thinking and focusing our collective creativity on the next 10,000 years.
The "Time Ticker." A must-see. After you get finished admiring its extremely cool graphics, you may not care what time it is.
Internet Time. A "completely new concept of global time," from Swatch. The system divides the day into 1000 "Swatch Beats," each equal to 1 minute 26.4 seconds. This over-designed site requires a Flash plug-in, a late-model browser, and a lot of patience.
Time Synchronization Server. Uses NTP (Network Time Protocol) to synchronize clients and servers to each other or to a standard reference. For techies only.
