FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:             NIST 94-24
May 24, 1994

Contact:  Collier Smith            WAIT A SECOND, LET'S NOT LEAP
          (303) 497-3198           INTO THIS UNTIL JUNE 30!


          I am about to take my last voyage, a great
          leap in the dark.
                         Thomas Hobbes, last words

          Look ere ye leap.
                         Proverbs, John Heywood

          Nature does not proceed by leaps.
                         Philosophia Botanica, Linnaeus

     It won't take a leap of faith to be in step with the times
at the end of June.  All you'll need to do is hold your clocks
back a second.

     The National Institute of Standards and Technology in
Boulder, Colo., and the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington,
D.C., keepers of the nation's two atomic clocks, will join in
adding a leap second to the world's time on June 30.

     The same adjustment has been made 18 times previously since
1972 (the last one on June 30, 1993), so it's not a leap into the
unknown for NIST scientists.  Such corrections are decreed by the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, and all
countries with atomic timekeeping systems comply.

     Leap seconds are needed to keep super-accurate atomic clocks
(such as NIST-7, which neither gains nor loses a second in a
million years) in step with the spinning Earth, whose rotation
varies several thousandths of a second per day.  Since we can't
speed up the Earth, we have to slow down the clocks to keep them
"in sync."  This slowdown is accomplished by stopping them for
exactly one second to let the Earth catch up.

     This year's leap second will be inserted at 23:59:60 UTC
(7:59:60 pm EDT) on June 30, 1994.  Use the extra time wisely,
perhaps to get a jump on the competition.

     As a non-regulatory agency of the Commerce Department's
Technology Administration, NIST promotes U.S. economic growth by
working with industry to develop and apply technology,
measurements and standards.

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