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Bill showed us the simplicity of the battery installation located on the back of the clock. |
It's About Time...
For Primex wireless that is.
Believe it or not our lives are run by time. We set our alarm clocks to get
up at a certain ?time?; We make sure we have enough ?time? to get to work or
school; We punch in and punch out on a ?timeclock?; We take our medications
at the same ?time? every day. But who monitors this ?time? to make sure that
we are all on the same ?time? schedule?
Being that the Chief Engineer magazine also needs to maintain a ?time? schedule,
we set about to find out just how accurate clocks can be and how they maintain
that accuracy. We traveled to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and met with William Schmidt,
Territory Manager, Mark Abbott, President, and Michelle Petersen, Marketing
Manager of Primex Wireless, Inc.
Primex actually began in 1973 as a small husband/wife company selling build-it
yourself clock kits out of their basement. Originally known as KlockIt, this
small company quickly built their reputation and grew at an astounding rate.
Today, they are three entities large with 250-300 employees covering the Toronto,
Hong Kong, and Mexico City markets as well as here in the United States. With
a factory still located in Lake Geneva, Primex has produced over 100 million
clock motors over the years.
Beginning with a state-of-the-art quartz clock movement in the 70s, the company
soon realized that this method of keeping ?time? was not always accurate. It
was also virtually impossible to ensure that each clock in a facility had not
only the same time, but the correct time. They set our to find a more accurate
way of keeping time synchronized and stumbled upon a way of building their own
atomic motors.
Based on the atomic clock, this motor received the AM time signal being sent
out by a 500,000-watt tower in Fort Collins, Colorado. They set about marketing
this concept to schools and universities where synchronized time was essential.
The concept worked; but not well. What they found was that this AM signal was
not strong enough to fully penetrate the walls of buildings, and what did get
through was a drastically degraded signal quality. ?So, while this system met
the need, it was not the solution?, Mark told us. ?Synchronized time that was
reliable and perfect day after day was what facility people wanted?, according
to Mark. After five years of research, Primex engineers developed the world?s
first GPS controlled, wireless clock system capable of synchronizing all clocks
in a facility.
The technology is actually very simple. Primex relies upon the precision of
the U.S. government?s global positioning system (GPS) satellites to relay time
signals to earth. From there a GPS receiver connected to a transmitter receives
the signal. The transmitter then broadcasts a licensed FCC FM radio signal to
each clock throughout the facility, enabling an unlimited number of timepieces
to be accurately synchronized.
This was a great discovery. However, we asked, what were some of the advantages
that made this system appealing to the masses? Given just two prime examples,
it was clearly obvious that this accuracy had far-reaching consequences.
?Take a school system for example?, said Mark. ?With individual clocks running
on their own time system, students are late, teachers are dealing with classroom
disruptions, and the maintenance staff has their hands full following a power
outage or time change. With fully synchronized clocks, a school of 1,000 students,
gaining five minutes per day, yields approximately 16,667 hours of added study
per year.? He went on demonstrating the need in a commercial market. With synchronized
clocks, employees can no longer blame the clock for being late, meetings are
attended in a timely fashion, and, once again, the need for maintenance staff
to reset all the clocks has been eliminated. ?This type of system will pay for
itself within six months of installation?, Mark concluded. The best part is
that the clocks can be run on two "D" batteries, providing a service
life of up to five years. This makes the system virtually maintenance free.
As we were getting ready to leave, we all checked our watches. Sure enough,
we were all leaving at a different time. All of us except Primex Wireless employees,
that is. It is all about time for them. And there was no arguing the point that
their time was the wrong time. They have the technology to prove otherwise.
Primex Wireless offers a free on-site analysis and demonstration of their system.
They can be reached at 1-800-537-0464.
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