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Comment by tanepiper | Hacker News Reader

> I’m not particularly patriotic, but this kind of thing feels particularly American.

Maybe that tinge of patriotism is why Americans don't even bother to see if something isn't an American invention - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL_(MSF) - they'll just claim it anyways since they barely read outside their borders.

Radio 4 would also like a word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal

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>The first radio time signal, sent by telegraphic code, was broadcast in September 1903 by the United States Navy. Most sources list Navesink, New Jersey as the site of this broadcast, but the reference clock was located at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) in Washington, DC. The first regularly scheduled time broadcasts began on August 9, 1904* from the Navy Yard in Boston. By the end of 1905, the Navy had transmitted time signals from stations in several other cities, including Norfolk, Newport, Cape Cod, Key West, Portsmouth, and Mare Island in California

(PDF) https://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/2131.pdf

*Another source said August 9, 1905

Yes but it's not "particularly American".

"In November 1898, an optical instrument maker and inventor named Sir Howard Grubb addressed the Royal Dublin Society and proposed the concept of a radio controlled clock."

It was already used in telegraph transmission.

America just implemented first.

And before radio, between 1880-1927, time was pumped throughout Paris in the form of compressed air using a network of pneumatic tubes.

Radio 4 is particularly interesting, as it carries additional 25bps data [0] using for radio teleswitch operation [1] - a service whose days are numbered. Quite fun to receive this signal, as it's trivial to build a 198KHz receiver and to recover the data stream (+ time signal) using a signal, e.g. mix it with a 200KHz signal and process the resultant 2Khz audio tone.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/rdreport_1984_19

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch

Radio 4 is also the station that if there is no communication with mainland UK, and Radio 4 no longer broadcasting, submarine commanders were to assume the country was attacked and destroyed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

The US Bill of Rights is copied almost word-for-word from English legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

A copy of the Magna Carta was in the National Archives for a while, and John Locke was a notable influence on founders such as Jefferson. Nihil novi sub sole.

I saw it there the day before yesterday!

Cool—I saw it once, and then it was gone a few years later. Maybe being serviced.

Oh dear. Where is it now?

In fairness, the United States is a breakaway region of Great Britain.

Afaik, not Great Britain which is Scotland, Wales and England combined. It was part of the British Empire when it broke away.

Inspired by, certainly. The founders were not ignorant and were aware of precedent.

But calling it "almost copied word-for-word" is not justifiable. On a trivial basis, it's literally not word-for-word in any way. On a more serious basis, there are significant changes in the laws, and enshrining something in an Act which can be changed by future Parliaments is a lot different that enshrining something into a Constitution which is much harder to change.

I was going to remark on this as well, but my observation is different: It strikes me as a very (old-school) American thing indeed. But not a modern American thing, if it was a modern American thing, it'd be privately owned, for profit with continually degrading quality and multiple incompatible "service providers" competing to trick people into their particular walled garden..

NPL - the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington, London, also invented packet switching, the foundational technology for the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching

inventing a solution to a problem, only in america

It’s like apple pie then

Existed everywhere in the world since radios became common.

I have an old solar powered Casio g-shock multi-band watch and it gets signals from transmitters located in US, Germany, UK, 2X Japan and China. I have never needed to put watch on time, or change batteries. https://gshock.casio.com/intl/technology/radio/

These are indeed very cool!

If for some reason you are a few standard deviations more paranoid about not having the correct time than the average person, they now apparently have models that can get the current time via GPS, time beacon, or Bluetooth from a connected smartphone :)

https://gshock.casio.com/us/technology/3way/

WWVB also broadcasts on 60KHz and a number of other frequencies. WWV (time signal on different frequency) was started a few years before the one you mention. Though I’m not sure it’s really worth arguing about… not sure who was the first radio time signal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock

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