Time is integral to how we structure our days, from dawn until dusk. Time is critical in how we plan out just about every aspect of life, something that can be seen very clearly in the morning commute to work that so many of us make on a daily basis. But poor planning can lead in serious delays and even getting stuck in traffic. As a matter of fact, the data that has been gathered on the subject is more than in support of this claim, showing that the average person can easily spend up to 42 hours in traffic on a yearly basis. This costs the average person as much as $1,400 a year in gas alone so therefore careful planning to mitigate this time frame spent in the car (such as avoiding times where traffic is at its peak, though this is certainly not something that everyone can avoid in their day to day scheduling).

Traffic can also impact getting to work on time, as can a number of other factors. Something like time cards can also impact the amount of money that is being spent all throughout the country. Far too many people enter their start and finish times incorrectly into their time cards, something that actually ends up costing the total economy of the United States more than $7 billion on a daily basis. Because something like the entering of times into time cards is not standardized, there is clearly a good amount of room for error – and these errors do, in fact, happen quite frequently both in small ways as well as sometimes in larger ones.

This just goes to show how important synchronized clock systems are. Synchronized clock systems have been around for a good deal of time now, even when they have not been in place in the form that we know them to be now. After all, there have been a few instances throughout history during which different clocks were tried out, such as when, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, a ten hour day was instituted. This was relatively shortlived, as too was the five day week and six day week as instituted by the Soviet Union between the years of 1929 and 1931.

Today, synchronized clock systems are more widespread and accurate than ever before, something that helps society to function all the more smoothly as time passes on and the keeping of synchronized time becomes more universal and standardized. The institution of Network Time Protocol had a big say in this and had a big impact on the world when it was first put in place back in the year of 1985. In fact, NTP is still in use today, one of the oldest synchronized clock systems that is still in use.

GPS clock synchronization is one of the synchronized clock systems that is also coming to the forefront, especially as our grasp on technology strengthens and as progression in this realm continues at a rapid pace. This synchronized clock system works through satellites that orbit our earth, of which there are now 31, all built with highly accurate atomic clocks. The GPS digital clock has now become a stable for many synchronized clock systems and has certainly helped to make the overall keeping of synchronized time all the easier, as well as all the more precise.

And still, there are even more highly effective synchronized clock systems in use today. PTP, or Precision Time Protocol, is one of them. Precision time protocol works by creating a synchronized clock system through the use of a computer network. This synchronized clock system is newer than some of the others, first widely standardized in the year of 2002. Of course, that is still a considerable period of time, not one to be underestimated in how it has changed our world – and how we look at synchronized clock systems and even how we use them.

There is just no denying that time is an important thing in the world as we know it. Time and its keeping influence much of how we live our lives. And thanks to synchronized clock systems, keeping time has never been easier or more precise.