Time.py sends time signals to a KOB wire and/or to a sounder or speakers. The time signals can be sent hourly, daily at 12:00 noon EST (that's 1:00 p.m. EDT during the summer), or continuously (every five minutes).
Optional command line parameters:
mode — Continuous, Hourly, or Daily (can be lowercase, only the first letter is needed; default: continuous)
wire — KOB wire no. (default: no connection to the KOB server)
idText — office call, etc.
If wire is specified, then idText is required. Signals are only sent over the wire if someone is listening.
Modify constants within the program to specify the serial port to use for the sounder, if any, and whether the simulated sounder should be enabled or not. The default is no port, no audio.
python Time.py
python Time.py d 102 "Time signals, AC"
The time signals are transmitted as a three-minute sequence of pulses, each pulse being sent once per second. The pulses are 400 ms in length. The sequence of pulses concludes with a longer, two-second pulse, which starts exactly at the top of the hour (or, in the case of continuous time signals, at an exact five minute interval). Some of the pulses in this sequence are intentionally omitted, allowing the particular minute in the sequence to be identified. The missing pulses for the daily time signals are shown in the following table. The same basic pattern is used for the continuous time signals.
A different format is used for the hourly time signal. In this case a simple two-second pulse is sent at the top of each hour. The pulse starts at second hh:00:00 and ends at second hh:00:02. This pulse corresponds to the telegraph signal that Western Union sent to certain customers for automatically setting clocks made by the Self Winding Clock Company.
For details on the pulse pattern and other information about Western Union time signals, see the article "Time from the Stars" in Popular Mechanics, Jan 1948, p: 138.