{"id":16919,"date":"2017-08-14T10:26:44","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T15:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=16919"},"modified":"2017-08-14T10:26:44","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T15:26:44","slug":"device-that-revolutionized-timekeeping-receives-an-ieee-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=16919","title":{"rendered":"Device That Revolutionized Timekeeping Receives an IEEE Milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Physicist James Clerk Maxwell was perhaps the first to recognize that atoms could be used to keep time. In 1879 he wrote to electricity pioneer William Thomson, suggesting that the \u201cperiod of vibration of a piece of quartz crystal\u201d would be a better absolute standard of time than the mean solar second (based on the Earth\u2019s rotation) but would still depend \u201cessentially on one particular piece of matter\u201d and therefore would be \u201cliable to accidents.\u201d Maxwell theorized that atoms would work even better as a natural standard of time. Thomson wrote in the second edition of the Elements of Natural Philosophy, published in 1879, that hydrogen atoms, sodium atoms, and others were \u201cabsolutely alike in every physical property\u201d and \u201cprobably remain the same so long as the particle itself exists.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theinstitute.ieee.org\/tech-history\/technology-history\/device-that-revolutionized-timekeeping-receives-an-ieee-milestone\">Device That Revolutionized Timekeeping Receives an IEEE Milestone &#8211; IEEE &#8211; The Institute<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicist James Clerk Maxwell was perhaps the first to recognize that atoms could be used to keep time. In 1879 he wrote to electricity pioneer William Thomson, suggesting that the \u201cperiod of vibration of a piece of quartz crystal\u201d would &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=16919\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[737],"tags":[416,645,343,1198],"class_list":["post-16919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stem","tag-atom","tag-history","tag-ieee","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16920,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16919\/revisions\/16920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}