[time-nuts] Calibration and temperature

[Bill Hawkins]

Re: [time-nuts] any way to bootstrap a frequency standard into a voltage
or resistance standard?
Brian Kirby said, in part,

"You will also find, that maintaining voltage references are a little
more difficult then time/frequency - we all have GPS or LORAN to verify
our time standards, etc.  You either have to have the equipment to
monitor the voltage references, or send them out for calibration.  I
prefer to leave standards/references where they are for stability
reasons, and send the test equipment out for regular calibration.  You
have the same environmental problems, you name a stable temperature
environment to operate them in."

Seems to me that all physical quantities have to be calibrated against
standards, because they're all defined by humans, starting with the
length of the king's arm. Timenuts have the great advantage of being
able to do calibration with radio waves. Don't think you can do that
with any of the other physical properties, and perhaps time is not a
physical property.

Temperature does affect everything made of atoms. PV=NRT and all that.
Timenuts strive for constant temperature inside small ovens. Industrial
sensors, which have to operate over a wide range of temperature daily
and seasonally, now rely on microprocessors with local temperature
sensors for temperature compensation. Some interesting designs have been
used to compensate the length of time-keeping pendulum oscillators.

Has any work been done on temperature compensation of quartz or other
oscillators to avoid the expense, space, and power of ovens? The
oscillating material must have a repeatable temperature curve, of
course.

Bill Hawkins