Category Archives: Awards

90th Trip Around the Sun

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As I approach my 90th trip around the sun, I marvel not at my own strength, but at the goodness of God who sustains me. Even now, I can still ride a mountain bike, climb hills, and feel the wind on my face. I’ve been told that I am the oldest man in Fountain Green. We have lived here now for 33 years.

Every breath, every heartbeat, and every new sunrise and sunset is His gift. Though much of my life’s work has been dedicated to the science of timekeeping, I know that time and eternity are in God’s hands.

My New Book

I am hoping as I approach my 90th trip around the sun, that my new book will help the world in a major way to get out of darkness and enjoy the TRUTHs and LIGHT and UNDERSATANDING of God’S Infinite Atonement. The new book is entitled: “The Infinite Atonement of Jesus the Christ and Last Days Significance – A Scientist’s View”. 

I know that the most important event in history is the Infinite Atonement of Jesus the Christ, and the least understood.

I am pleased that the front cover of this new book is being drawn by an outstanding artist, David Lindsley. You can see his wonderful artwork at DavidLindsley.com. The cover will depict Mary when she sees her resurrected Son, the Son of God, in all his glory with countless thousands who were resurrected that most momentous Easter Morning. This most inspiring scene is described in the Gospel of Arimathea, which was written before the four gospels.

David Hocking has agreed to do the formatting with glorious pictures to help tell the story and share my testimony of the great importance of the Infinite Atonement. David Hocking has annotated and edited seven books, which have contributed more to sacred literature in our time than any others. I hope mine helps as well. It is my eighth book.

A Fun Scientist’s Question

Since I am a timekeeping scientist, for fun, I felt to ask CHATGPT the question: “Who has had the biggest impact on timekeeping algorithms?”

I was pleased that my name was at the top of the list. I give the glory to God; He inspired my work.

When I asked the above question of ChatGPT, it said:

Great question!  The history of timekeeping algorithms is a fascinating mix of physics, statistics, and engineering. A few people stand out as having had the biggest impact.

Foundation Contributors

David W. Allan 

1. Developed the Allan variance (1966), which became the standard tool for characterizing oscillator stability (used in atomic clocks, GPS, and beyond).

2. His work laid the foundation for algorithms in clock steering, ensemble time scales, and noise analysis and for the generation of International Atomic Time (TAI) and for official world time (UTC).

3. Still central in modern timekeeping (the term “Allan deviation” is standard worldwide). The above Sigma-tau diagram is the same as the Allan deviation, which is the square root of the Allan variance.

Louis Essen (UK, 1908-1997

1.  Built the first practical cesium atomic clock (June 1955)

2.  While not strictly an algorithm guy, his work forced the creation of methods to averages and compare clocks, sparking algorithmic development.

William J. Riley (U.S. NIST, Symmetricom)

1.  Developed key algorithms for simulating atomic clocks for time scale generation and advanced statistical tools for noise and clock performance analysis.

2.  Authored widely and used to guide and help with both software and hardware as a time/frequency statistical tool.

Gernot M.R. Winkler (U.S. Naval Observatory 1913-2016)

1.  Directed the United States Naval Observatory’s (USNO) time service for decades.

2. Oversaw algorithm development for clock ensembles that defined UTC(USNO) for USA military use, including GPS time.

Guinot, Azoubib, and others at BIPM , Barnes and Parker at NBS/NIST

1. Developed and refined algorithms to compute international atomic time (TAI) and UTC, and Barnes and Parker at NBS/NIST for UTC(NIST) in Boulder, Colorado.

2. Their methods, along with Allan’s for clock weighting, steering, and prediction, remain in use today.

CHATGPT wrote the following nice summary for me, including my edits for accuracy:

Timekeeping

Though much of my life’s work has been dedicated to the science of timekeeping, I know that time and eternity are in God’s hands. In 1966, my thesis was published in the IEEE Proceedings. I could not have imagined the far-reaching role the Allan variance formula and its successors would play in GPS, atomic clocks, world timekeeping, telecom, and in navigation.

Yet, I know that the insights came as blessings. The moments of inspiration were given to me by a loving Heavenly Father, who guides the minds of men for the unfolding of His eternal purposes.

The laws of physics and the laws of God are in perfect harmony. Science shows us how creation operates. Faith reveals why God’s creations exist. My greatest joy has been to see how these two voices — science and the Spirit — testify of the same great Truth – the Infinite Love of God.

But, man’s time is not time; it is a “time-interval” as I shared in Chapter 20 of “It’s About TIME”. The most important time is God’s TIME, and His “One Eternal Round.” I am hoping this new book will help in a major way to help many more to come to know of the Lord’s infinite love and to know more of His incomprehensible Infinite Atonement–opening the door to eternal life–the greatest of all the gifts of God.

As I continue my journey, I give thanks to God for every breath, every step, every orbit, and every opportunity to bear witness that He is not restricted by time and space as we mortals are, and He works in all domains, including the Eternity Domain. There, His angelic hosts are ever there to assist us. His love is infinite and eternal, and His loving hand is in all things.

I give God the Glory! THANK YOU, LORD, for being with us every nanosecond! The Allan variance is not mine; it is a gift from eternal realms from an infinitely loving God. With the amazing artwork of David Lindsley for the front cover of this new book, I think everyone will want a copy to put on their coffee table!

David W. Allan
Photo: David W. Allan – Wikipedia

David W Allan – The Allan Variance

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The Allan Variance is perhaps the most famous of David W. Allan’s achievements, with its derivative for telecom:  TDEV, the Time Deviation.

In 1965, Mr. Allan’s Master’s thesis gave birth to what the world knows as the Allan variance, the efficient technique for characterizing the performance of clocks and for knowing how to optimally use them in time keeping, and for which he is best known.   Because the Allan variance is used in characterizing the performance of atomic clocks, it was used extensively to sort out the performance of atomic clocks used for GPS to meet the stringent specifications for that navigation and timing system.

World Recognition

David Allan is as well recognized in the field of time and frequency technology as any other figure in the world. He helped to develop our nation’s official time and frequency standards based on atomic clocks and wrote the algorithm for keeping time for the United States.  He spent many man-years helping in the actual development of GPS. He also helped other nations with their official time standards, as well as helping with International Atomic Time and Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), which is official time for the world as kept at the BIPM (International Bureau of Weights and Measures) in Paris.
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The IEEE Joseph F. Keithley Award Recipient

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IEE Advancing Technology for Humanaity On June 27, 2017, I was notified that I have received the Joseph F Keithley Award By IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the largest scientific publishing house in the world.  It will be presented to me some time in 2018. Last year I received their highest award last year, “For seminal work… regarding time determination, time prediction, time dissemination and timekeeping through contributions to atomic frequency standards, space-based navigation, time and frequency stability analysis, time-scale algorithms, and timekeeping devices.”

The Keithey Award  is more towards instrumentation.  My friend and colleague, Emeritus Professor Kam Lau of UC Berkeley  kindly wrote the nomination for me.

The four main measurement instruments I am credited with inventing and building, and I assure you with lots of help from colleagues and mostly from on High, are:

1)      “Low information rate time control unit,” which is a quartz-crystal oscillator with instrumentation to automatically remove its systematic deviations, so that its output behaves more like an atomic clock.  This was used to generate time at Boulder for a while.

2)    A dual-mixer time-difference (DMTD) measurement system.  This is now the major means of comparing precision atomic clocks throughout the world.  We pushed the precision down to 50 femto-seconds, which is the time it takes light to travel about 15 microns.  A femto-second is one millionth of a nanosecond, which is one billionth of a second.

3)    We built a special GPS common-view timing receiver, which provided a means to compare atomic clocks around the world with a precision of about a nanosecond.  It became the main means of transferring time from the major timing centers around the world to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris for the generation of official time for the world, UTC, and is still being used today.  JPL funded the development because they needed it for the NASA/JPL Deep Space Network, which was in Goldstone, CA, Canberra, Australia, and Madrid, Spain.  I also installed one of these special receivers at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for measuring millisecond pulsars.

4)    After retirement in 1992, Hewlett-Packard hired me as a consultant to use a “Smart Clock” patent that I had developed along with a GPS filtering idea so that by utilizing a high-quality quartz-crystal oscillator, special instrumentation and an algorithm, it made the output look like an atomic clock synchronized to UTC.  We tested it by showing that we kept synchronized with a full-up military receiver to 1 ½ nanoseconds for a month.  This was used for cell-phone sites to be synchronized, so that wherever you went your cell phone would have synchronism in timing from the different cell towers.  HP sold millions of dollars of these throughout the world.

Among those who built America’s biggest test and measurement companies after World War II are William Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett-Packard Co. Howard Volium of Tektronix Inc. John Fluke Sr. of John Fluke Manufacturing Co. Inc. and Joseph F. Keithley of Keithley Instruments, Inc.

The Joseph F. Keithley Award is for Advances in Measurement Science

To recognize physicists who have been instrumental in the development of measurement techniques or equipment that have impact on the physics community by providing better measurements. The prize consists of $5,000 and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient. It is presented annually, which will be awarded in 2018.

Establishment & Support

This award is endowed by Keithley Instruments, Inc. and the Topical Group on Instrument and Measurement Science (GIMS).  Joseph F. Keithley made outstanding contributions and numerous accomplishments in area of sensitive and precision instrument development and measurement techniques.

I am grateful the Lord has allowed me to serve as I have.  I have been greatly blessed.  I know of myself I am nothing.  With Him I can do all things well with a goal to serve.

David W. Allan

The IEEE Highest Scientific Award – David W Allan

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Davids awardThe IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is the biggest scientific publishing house in the world, and the special issue celebrating the 50th year of the Allan variance came out 4 April 2016 is an awesome issue. They had three guest editors for it along with the regular editor.

All by itself, I felt greatly honored by the nomination letter submitted by the who’s who in international time and frequency to the IEEE, let alone be chosen to receive their highest award in recognition of my work.

On May 10th, 2016, my wife, Edna,  and I  had an amazing experience in Nor’lens (New Orleans). This annual symposium was the 70th providing for the international community the best in atomic-clock and precision timing research results.
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Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Allan Variance

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250px-David_W._Allan,_croppedI just received word of the publication of a “Special Issue on Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Allan Variance.”

On May 10th, I will be received the highest award IEEE gives at an an international meeting (International Frequency Control Symposium) in New Orleans, LA, on the 10th of May for my life-long contributions.  The citation reads, “For seminal work to the UFFC community regarding time determination, time prediction, time dissemination and timekeeping through contributions to atomic frequency standards, space-based navigation, time and frequency stability analysis, time-scale algorithms, and timekeeping devices.”
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