August 23 - The Great Synchronization

[Gaybutton]

Maybe this will help "Thai time."

 

The following appears in the PATTAYA DAILY NEWS:

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Thailand Standardizes Clocks

 

As from Aug 23, 2008, all public and official clocks will be synchronized to enable all the citizens of Thailand can hear the national anthem at the same time. Currently, Thailand doesn‘t actually have a standard time, but now, for the first time, the Royal Thai Navy‘s Hydrographic Department will act as the official timekeeper to standardize time throughout the country.

 

Time checks will be able to be performed at two times during the day: 8 AM and 6 PM by tuning in to FM radio stations. Technological-based agencies, such as telecommunications operators, visual and audio broadcasters, computer networks and internet cafes will be instructed to follow the standard time according to the directive of The Science and Technology Ministry, who will enforce the convention by fining offenders between Bt100,000 and 500,000.

 

Pian Totarong, Director of the National Institute of Metrology, which governs national measurement standards, said the clock synchronization will benefit agencies dependent on precision, such as security, public health, scientific research and satellite technologically-based organizations.

 

Most of the world, however, synchronizes its time by a slightly more efficient method, namely the use of the atomic clock . These have been in existence since 1949, but the first accurate atomic clock was built in the UK's National Physical Laboratory in 1955 by Louis Essen. tHis was the caesium standard based on a transition of the caesium-133 atom and led to the first internationally agreed definition of the second. More accurate models wre progresively developed, but in August 2004, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists developed a chip-scaled atomic clock, which was e one-hundredth the size of any other.

 

In February 2008, physicists at JILA, a joint institute of the NIST and the University of Colorado at Boulder, developed the world's most accurate timepiece, a clock based on strontium atoms trapped in a laser grid. This clock is over twice as accurate as any previous clock and has an inaccuracy of less than one second in 200 million years.

[Guest buaseng]

Thailand doesn‘t actually have a standard time, Now we know why Thai boys are never on time for a date! but now, for the first time, the Royal Thai Navy‘s Hydrographic Department will act as the official timekeeper to standardize time throughout the country.

 

.....the clock synchronization will benefit agencies dependent on precision, such as security, public health, scientific research, satellite technologically-based organizations, and farangs waiting to meet their b/f's or 'take-offs'.

 

[Guest Steve1903]

This idea of playing the national anthem all over the place is sooooo old hat. Maybe they should drop that nonsense altogether.