Greenwich Time Signal 19:00. By 19:45 the same day the power supply was repaired and the 20:00 pips were broadcast as normal. Many radio broadcasters around the world use the Greenwich Time Signal as a means to mark the start of the hour. The pips are used in both domestic and international commercial and public broadcasting. Many radio stations use six tones similar to those used by the BBC World Service; some shorten it to five, four, or three tones. Greenwich Time Signal The Greenwich Time Signal (GTS), popularly known as the pips, is a series of six short tones broadcast at one-second
Greenwich Time Signal as from the Droitwich AM transmitter, which is the distance to Central London. As a pre-IRIG and pre-NTP time transfer and transmission system, the pips have been a great technological success. In modern times, however, time can be transferred to systems with CPUs and operating systems by using BCD or some Unix Time variant. Newer digital broadcasting methods have introduced even greater problems for the accuracy of use of the pips. On digital platforms such as DVB, DAB, satellite and the internet, the pips—although "generated" accurately—are not "heard" by the listener exactly on the hour. The encoding and decoding of