Got the Time Tick, Tick, Tickin' in My Head

The cool thing -- one of the many cool things -- about the U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock is its voice. You can tell it's a real guy, not like those soulless technocrats over at NOAA Weather Radio. Obviously, the USNO voice announcements must be a pastiche of previously-recorded sound clips, but it's not as jarring as some other voice simulacra I've heard. For example, when an automated voicemail system repeats a multi-digit number you've entered on the keypad, it doesn't follow the normal cadences of human speech -- it articulates each number the exact same way ("You entered... 3! 5! 7! 9! If this is correct, please press the pound key"). Necessarily so, because the original speaker probably just recorded each digit one time, the recording to be accessed and inserted wherever needed.

Not so with Mr. USNO. When he says "At the tone: Eleven hours, forty-three minutes, twenty seconds," it sounds like an actual sentence that an actual human might say. I imagine that someone in the Naval Observatory -- the admiral in charge of time, perhaps (who probably gets a lot of grief from the other admirals, who are out there on destroyers and aircraft carriers and whatnot, while he's back in D.C. setting watches, and he probably gets really defensive about it, like "Yeah, well, let's see you try to launch a synchronized amphibious assault without some accurate standard of time measurement, motherfucker") -- sat him down with a script that looked something like this: "One hour, two hours, three hours... One minute, two minutes, three minutes... Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds..." et cetera. So the voice guy recorded all the hours with the intonation you would give to something at the start of a sentence, then went on to do the minutes to sound as if they were in the middle, and the seconds with the dropping intonation and finality of the end of the sentence. Which shows an admirable aesthetic sense and devotion to craft.

I enjoy keeping my watch set exactly to USNO time. I've never actually needed that much accuracy in my daily activities, but it does help me predict when exactly the news breaks start on NPR. But I intentionally keep two clocks inaccurate: my alarm clock and my dashboard clock. This is to artificially create the feeling of relief you get when you realize you're not as late as you thought you were. There is probably a German name for that feeling. Something like "schnelletaktgeberfreude."

Incidentally, Babelfish translates "relief" into German as "entlastlung" -- which translates back into English as "discharge." I trust there is no need to make the obligatory massage parlor reference; if the need exists, please advise.

Comments

[Ben Turney]

Jerry, this is great. I honestly don't know if I ever encouraged you to start a blog, but if I did not, I certainly should have. I think I have said you should write for The Onion, and I by God stand by that comment. In any case, the blog is started without my saying so, which is just fine -- it's yet another instance of life taking a little initiative for itself, while I lazy around in bed. I love the German word, and the attention to this USNO thing. Don't be harshing too bad on my NOAA now. They had that whole prediction of Katrina being the worst disaster ever, that was not listened to by the Feds and thus was a source of minor skewering of them on The Daily Show, probably because they were all off checking their watches on USNO. Which should be saying something to NOAA, if they are listening -- something like, "Get a real clock voice why don't you, so people can bear to tune in." One of the many lessons to be learned from these disasters.

[Erin]

I DID encourage you, which means I can take all the credit for how great this is!

[Mary Cromer]

Jerry, this is awesome. Fuck yeah! You rock, and so does your blog.

[skeeto]

I also practice the art of keeping two clocks ahead so I feel better about "how not so late I am" ....is this a common habit among people?....coincidence? conspiracy?
I figure it is fair game to post to archival blogs if they are linked to current posts...no? I am now only going to hit the post button once.
Sarah.