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Calibration of Time Base Oscillators
White Paper
Introduction
Counting intervals has been going on since man's beginning.
Early time measurements involved counting the number of days in
terms of sunrises, sunsets, or moons. Later, the day was divided
into smaller increments by using an hourglass, candles, sundial,
etc. With the discovery of the pendulum, clocks were born. The
accuracy of early clocks was around 1 part in 1000.
As more accurate clocks were produced, new uses of time
measurement were explored. As new uses were discovered, the
need for even more accurate clocks became apparent.
Atomic Accuracy
Current state-of-the-art atomic frequency standards have attained an accuracy
of 1 part in 1013 (1 in 10 million, million) in the laboratory. The specified accuracy
in commercially available atomic clocks has reached