The clock behind the internet, finance, and GPS
Time isn’t just about watches and alarms — it powers everything from GPS to stock market trades to data centers.
“Time signals are used literally billions of times each day for everything from setting clocks and watches to ensuring the accurate time stamping of hundreds of billions of dollars of electronic financial transactions,” said Liz Donley, who leads NIST’s Time and Frequency Division.
NIST-F4 helps steer the official U.S. time scale, known as UTC(NIST), and contributes to the global timekeeping standard, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Its ultra-precise data helps ensure systems worldwide stay synchronized down to the microsecond.