Bill Jeffrey writes:

I was reading about this somewhere just the other day - I think it was
rec.antiques.radio+phono, but I will confirm and get back if that is
wrong.

The topic of the thread was remote-reading electrical power meters -
you could Google it. The gist of the topic was that there are many
ways in which a remote-reading power meter can work. Most cause no
harm or interference of any kind. But one of them involves
"modulating the zero-crossings" in the AC waveform, a signalling
method which can be triggered and read from a remote location.
Apparently, this technique can cause extra zero-crossings to show up,
and a clock which counts time by counting zero-crossings will gain
time. There is any easy fix, IIRC.

So the question becomes, has the power company retrofitted the power
meters in your neighborhood recently?

I'm glad my semi-antique (30+ years) clock radio still uses a synchronouc
motor. Full cycles are all that matter!

How did a signally scheme like that ever get approved? A large precentage
of AC powered clocks must count zero crossings.

But, didn't he say he thought there was a crystal in the RCA?

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