It was a bonging success and the following year the first fully accessible time signal, the greenwich time signal, started to be broadcast every hour and it hasn t stopped since. the pips, as they were known, were generated by a swinging pendulum fitted with electrical contacts. so now you could have accurate greenwich mean time literally anywhere that you had a radio. the pips have become legendary, a symbol of bbc radio, and who better to tell us about them than another legend of bbc radio, tony blackburn. archive: welcome along - to the tony blackburn show this morning for this tuesday the ninth of december. my thanks, as always tojohn dunn for swinging us up until the seven o clock hour. the pips have always been a favourite of mine since 1967 when ijoined the bbc and opened up radio 1. archive: good morning everyone,
It is and help them navigate. at the height of the british empire, britain had a lot more ships than anyone else anywhere in the world and their maps all needed to follow a strict format so they could figure out where they were. the centre of all british nautical charts was the greenwich meridian, 0 degrees, and each vessel also kept a fancy clock on board that told them local time at the meridian and helped them to calculate their position really precisely. but over long journeys, how could the captains keep those clocks accurate to the second? well, to bring in the new year in 1923, the bbc ran an experiment to broadcast the midnight bongs of big ben on the radio. it was a bonging success and the following year the first fully accessible time signal, the greenwich time signal, started to be broadcast every hour and it hasn t stopped since.
Format so they could figure out where they were. the centre of all british nautical charts was the greenwich meridian, 0 degrees, and each vessel also kept a fancy clock on board that told them local time at the meridian and helped them to calculate their position really precisely. but over long journeys, how could the captains keep those clocks accurate to the second? well, to bring in the new year in 1923, the bbc ran an experiment to broadcast the midnight bongs of big ben on the radio. it was a bonging success and the following year the first fully accessible time signal, the greenwich time signal, started to be broadcast every hour and it hasn t stopped since. the pips, as they were known, were generated by a swinging pendulum fitted with electrical contacts.
Empire, britain had a lot more ships than anyone else anywhere in the world and their maps all needed to follow a strict format so they could figure out where they were. the centre of all british nautical charts was the greenwich meridian, 0 degrees, and each vessel also kept a fancy clock on board that told them local time at the meridian and helped them to calculate their position really precisely. but over long journeys, how could the captains keep those clocks accurate to the second? well, to bring in the new year in 1923, the bbc ran an experiment to broadcast the midnight bongs of big ben on the radio. it was a bonging success and the following year the first fully accessible time signal, the greenwich time signal, started to be broadcast every hour and it hasn t stopped since. the pips, as they were known,
0 degrees, and each vessel also kept a fancy clock on board that told the local time at the meridian and helped them to calculate their position really precisely. but over long journeys, how could the captains keep those clocks accurate to the second? well, to bring in the new year in 1923, the bbc ran an experiment to broadcast the midnight bongs of big ben on the radio. big ben bongs it was a bonging success, and the following year the first fully accessible time signal, the greenwich time signal, started to be broadcast every hour and it hasn t stopped since. the pips, as they were known, were generated by a swinging pendulum fitted with electrical contacts. so now you could have accurate greenwich mean time literally anywhere that you had a radio.