Greenwich Time Signal Greenwich Time Signal The Greenwich Time Signal (GTS), popularly known as the pips, is a series of six short tones broadcast at one-second intervals by many BBC Radio stations. The pips were introduced in 1924 and have been generated by the BBC since 1990 to mark the precise start of each hour. Their utility in calibration is diminishing as digital broadcasting entails time lags. There are six pips (short beeps) in total, which occur on each of the 5 seconds leading up to the hour and on the hour itself. Each pip is a 1 kHz tone (about halfway between
The Five Orange Pips ship's sternpost marked "LS" sighted in the North Atlantic. The 1945 film "Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear" is partly based on "The Five Orange Pips". "The Five Orange Pips" was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 1990 as part of Bert Coules' complete radio adaptation of the canon, starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. The November 2014 episode of "Elementary" titled "The Five Orange Pipz" takes some story elements from this short story. The unusual "Pipz" spelling is the trademarked name of a fictional bead toy where a manufacturing error rendered the orange beads