The National Research Council Time Signal is Canada's longest running but shortest radio programme. Heard every day since November 5, 1939 (three years and three days after the CBC's establishment), shortly before 13:00 Eastern Time across the CBC Radio One network, it lasts between 15 and 45 seconds, ending exactly at 13:00. During standard time, the signal is at 13:00 Eastern Standard Time and during Daylight Saving Time, the signal is at 13:00 Eastern Daylight Saving Time.
The signal is also heard on some stations of the Première Chaîne radio network at 12:00 ET daily.
The signal consists of a series of 300 ms "pips" of an 800 Hz sine wave tone, each one starting at the top of each UTC second, up to ten seconds before the hour, followed by silence, and then a one second-long 800 Hz tone to mark the top of the hour. The CBC time signal is typically delayed by about 300 ms with respect to the CHU time signal, because each CBC radio station receives the actual time signal from Ottawa by satellite.
The spoken header, as announced by a local on-air talent at each station, is typically of the style,
| “ | Now, the National Research Council time signal. The beginning of the long dash following ten seconds of silence indicates exactly one o'clock, Eastern Standard Time, January 15th, 2010. | ” |
In different time zones, the local time and time zone is used instead. This header is usually spoken over the initial pips. As of May 2011, the length of the silence has been reduced to six seconds.
At the top of many other hours, and at the discretion of each station, a one-second tone is sounded, but the hour itself is not necessarily announced.
Read more about National Research Council Time Signal: NRC Telephone Talking Clock, NRC NTP Service
Famous quotes containing the words national, research, council, time and/or signal:
“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
—Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)
“People get a bad impression of it by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don’t try to predict what.”
—Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)
“Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)