Cesium Frequency Standard
name: label: maker
content: Boeing Company
notes: label: Description
content: This instrument—made by Frequency and Time Systems Inc. (FTS), Danvers, Mass.—dates from the “concept validation phase” of the Global Positioning System (GPS) program between 1974 and 1978.
label: Description
content: It is based on the successful cesium standards the firm developed with the Naval Research Laboratory for NTS-2, the second of the Navigation Technology Satellites (NTS) launched in 1977 to validate the key concepts and hardware for GPS. Although the first three GPS satellites, built by Rockwell International (now Boeing) beginning in 1974, contained only rubidium standards, cesium standards of this type were incorporated thereafter. FTS and its successor companies remained the principal supplier of space-qualified cesium frequency standards for the GPS program. The cesium clock program expanded to include two additional suppliers, Kernco, also in Massachusetts, and Frequency Electronics Inc. on Long Island.
label: Description
content: FTS was founded in 1971 and later became a subsidiary of Datum Inc., which Symmetricom acquired in 2002.
label: Description
content: Reference:
label: Description
content: Carlene Stephens, “Time in Place: Cold War Clocks in the American West,” in Volker Janssen, ed., <i>Where Minds and Matters Meet: Technology in California and the West.</i> (Pasadena, CA: Huntington Library Press of University of California Press, 2012), 321-345.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Modern Physics
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of The Boeing Company through Francis M. Czopek
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2013.0109.01
label: accession number
content: 2013.0109
label: catalog number
content: 2013.0109.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Cesium frequency standard
label: Object Name
content: cesium frequency standard
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: anodized aluminum (housing material)
label: Physical Description
content: rubber; plastic; gold plated ports and fittings (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 1/4 in x 5 in x 15 in; 20.955 cm x 12.7 cm x 38.1 cm