Fellow Judah Levine invited me to come out to the WWV remote transmission station, located 12 miles northwest of Fort Collins to shoot some photos for the upcoming JILA Light & Matter article titled "Spare Time". Naturally I was pretty excited about getting away from the desk (which is currently messy with my sketches from other other projects) and checking out this backup time scale WWV. I have heard about it, but I never experienced it myself. Driving out there in a government suburban with computer parts in the back felt like we playing a part in some kind of X-Files episode. Questions like "what does a place housing the backup time scale look like?, What consitutes a time scale?, Is this location top secret?" kept popping in my head. Of course the WWV station rather simple looking, but if you are geek like me then you get excited that time is counting right there in front of you and who is depending on these numbers. The WWV site is really just a bunch of radio towers and building fool of computers and vintage equipment. The computer vault itself was kinda crazy. I felt like it could absorb a missle strike. There were a lot of water bottles in the room, and I was just imagining that were for the person who would have lock themselves in the vault to protect the Nations Time or else all hell would break out. But no, they were just there to absorb the massive amounts of heat that computers were generating. Regardless it was really fun and see a new part of Colorado. I really did feel like Fox Mulder from X-files and that I needed a gun (and having Scully next time giving me sound and objective advice about my suspicions would be pretty hot too) because some aliens or foriegn governement agency was about come fuck with AMERICA's TIME....also i had my camera so I could finally get the proof that Scully is always nagging me about.
- Clients: Judah Levine
- Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article
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