Does anybody really know what time it is?

It's the early 1990s, and this pilot fish is working on a project to ... well, you're better off not knowing.

"Sixty engineers working on system for a year with exactly two weeks to execute an experiment using three cesium clocks to synchronize down to a microsecond between three ships at sea," fish says. "Why? Don't ask -- they'd have to shoot you.

"After a final synchronization with the national atomic clock while on land, one of our engineers of Japanese descent took the opportunity to synchronize his watch.

"A few days later at sea, he checked the cesium display again and found his watch was many seconds off. The displays on the other cesium clocks agreed, but ours was way off.

"Before scrapping the whole exercise -- and waiting six months for another opportunity -- we discovered that keying a walkie-talkie within five feet of the clock caused the display to jump a second.

"And this clock was located right next to the communications station.

"It turned out only the display was affected. Hardwired feeds were fine, so the experiment was saved.

"Our Japanese engineer's comment: 'American clock that can't keep time: $50,000. Seiko watch: $12.'"

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