Rubidium Frequency Standard, Engineering Model
name: label: maker
content: Boeing Company
notes: label: Description
content: This is a prototype rubidium “atomic clock” developed for Block I Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites about 1974. It dates from the “concept validation phase” of the program, from 1974 through 1978, when the first eight satellites were built.
label: Description
content: In the contract competition for the first GPS satellites, Southern California aerospace firm Rockwell International (now the Boeing Company) won with a design that featured miniature rubidium frequency standards made by Efratom, a firm in Munich, Germany, under principals Ernst Jechart and Gerhard Huebner. In 1973, in anticipation of U.S. defense work, Jechart opened an American operation in Irvine, Ca., called Efratom California Inc. Rockwell’s final design for the GPS space clock consisted of three parts—an Efratom physics package (the part of the clock containing the atoms that provide the fundamental frequency for the clock), electronics made at Rockwell’s Anaheim division (also known as Autonetics) and voltage-controlled crystal oscillators from Frequency Electronics (FEI) of Long Island, N.Y.
label: Description
content: In 1979 Rockwell contracted for additional rubidium standards from EE&G in Massachusetts—an instrument firm founded by MIT engineers Harold Edgerton, Kenneth Germeshausen and Henry Grier. After 1989, EE&G (now Perkin Elmer) would become the sole contractor for rubidium clocks.
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: 2013.0109.02
label: accession number
content: 2013.0109
label: catalog number
content: 2013.0109.02
objectType: label: Object Name
content: rubidium cesium standard
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: aluminum, steel, rubber, plastic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 in x 4 1/2 in x 7 1/2 in; 15.24 cm x 11.43 cm x 19.05 cm