Before atomic timekeeping, clocks were set to the skies. But starting in 1972, radio signals began broadcasting atomic seconds and leap seconds have occasionally been added to that stream of atomic seconds to keep the signals synchronized with the ac
tual rotation of Earth. Such adjustments were considered necessary because Earths rotation is less regular than atomic timekeeping. In January 2012, a United Nations-affiliated organization could permanently break this link by redefining Coordinated Universal Time. To understand the importance of this potential change, its important to understand the history of human timekeeping.
