Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Precision Time for All — Broadcast Version
For more than a century, NIST radio stations have made the precise time available for free to everyone in the United States.
Today, the NIST time broadcast serves as a dependable time reference independent of GPS, offering a backup for timing applications reliant on GPS synchronization.
From TV networks to massive data centers, applications requiring precise time synchronization benefit from this reliability, including commercially available network time servers that use the WWVB signal for synchronization with computers and equipment across the United States.
Learn more about WWVB Read about the 50-year history of WWVB
Interested in learning more about NIST and radio?
- NIST’s Role in the Early Decades of Radio (blog post)
- NIST Radio Station WWV Celebrates a Century of Service (blog post)
- Grote Reber, Radio Astronomer (blog post)
- ‘W’eird Signals: Listening in on the Eclipse (blog post)
- Time on the Beach: Working at NIST Hawaii (blog post about WWVH)