The proposal for a time signal came
from one Frank Hope-Jones in a radio talk in April 1923. Reith and the
Astronomer Royal, Frank Dyson, agreed on the idea of broadcasting Greenwich
Standard Time with a chronometer at the Royal Observatory tripping a switch at
five seconds to the hour to create those iconic pips – using a 1kHz oscillator, for the
technically minded. The time signal was first broadcast at 9.30 p.m. on 5
February 1924.
Time signal broadcasts in 1928 |
From the start there were always six
pips, but the last one was extended from 1/10th of a second to 1/2 a second on
31 December 1971; the result of an international agreement to adopt “leap
seconds” which required a seventh pip now and again. As the BBC Handbook helpfully used to say:
“all that needs to be remembered is that the exact start of the hour is marked
by the start of the final long pip.”
In February 1990 responsibility for
generating the pips was taken over by the BBC, the equipment stored in the
bowels of Broadcasting House. They’ve not been without incident: they started
to come adrift by a few seconds in 2008 and in 2011 they packed in all together.
Computer problems were blamed.
So here’s my ‘pips soundscape’ to
commemorate those ninety years of time-keeping. You’ll hear the voices of Mr
Hope-Jones, Peter Jones, Sandi Toksvig, Barry Cryer, Terry Wogan, Jan Ravens,
Eddie Mair and Keith Skues. The music includes Handel’s Clock Symphony, Delia Derbyshire’s Time To Go, David Lowe’s themes for BBC News and part of Damon
Albarn’s Radio Reunited.
You can follow the Greenwich Time Signal on Twitter @BBC_GTS where you’ll find it sulking in the basement and berating the continuity announcers.
1 comment:
I've certainly worked on a show where the quarter-past pips were broadcast, but that was because someone had left the fader up by mistake!
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