Radio controlled wall clocks

The clock on your wall

Wall clocks have been around for about as long as mechanical clocks themselves, i.e. for about 600-1,000 years. The term wall clock summarizes all clocks that are attached to a wall. Thus, this is a collective term under which, among other things, both analog and digital watches are hidden. A few pendulum clocks are also synchronized by radio signal.

The radio-controlled clock

A radio-controlled clock is a quartz clock that receives a time signal emitted by radio and uses it to display the current time. Radio-controlled clocks have been around since 1973. However, for the first time in 1986, inepensive radio-controlled watches were produced for the mass market. Often this technique was combined with a digital LCD display. Nowadays, however, there are just as many analogue radio-controlled clocks. It is not uncommon for radio-controlled clocks to offer additional functions, such as the display of date, day of the week, temperature or humidity.

Of transmitters and receivers

In order to perform its service properly, a radio-controlled clock needs a receiver to receive the time signal signal of a long-wave transmitter. Many countries have their own transmitter. In Germany, this is the DCF77 in Mainflingen near Frankfurt a.M., which transmits the Central European time signal. The range of the radio signal is about 2,000 km. This means that radio-controlled clocks officially sold in Germany are automatically set to the respective German or Central European time almost everywhere in Europe.

I want to know eactly

Although the time signal is transmitted continuously, it is usually only queried once a day by the common radio-controlled clocks; with some clocks also hourly. Both are completely sufficient to compensate for the rate error of the quartz watches.
The biggest advantage of a radio-controlled clock is therefore the etreme accuracy with which the time is displayed. You don't have to adjust the radio-controlled clock manually either. This also means that there is no need to change the clock when switching between winter and summer time.