NOVEMBER 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 25
WHOLLY MOLI
FREQUENCY ELECTRONICS
THE TIMEKEEPER
BY CLAUDE SOLNIK
Many people think that the time
on their cell phone, clock, or watch
is accurate, but Uniondale-based
Frequency Electronics, Inc. makes
atomic clocks capable of precision
timing that makes a Rolex look cheap.
Founded 58 years ago by Martin
Bloch, Frequency uses a metal
called rubidium to make clocks that
are accurate within nanoseconds or
millionths of a second. The company,
which employs about 150 on Long
Island, takes that second hand, essentially,
and slices time into smaller
increments used for everything from
aircraft to satellites.
“They’re not inexpensive for space
applications,” says Frequency Electronics
CEO Stanton Sloane, whose
clients include large aerospace and
defense companies.
“For space, you have to
survive radiation. They can be
a couple of million dollars.”
These small boxes — sized anywhere
from a “D” battery to a shoebox — let
companies track the silent drumbeat
of time at levels difficult to imagine.
To understand Frequency, it helps
to understand the way watches
work. Some measure mechanical
movement, while digital watches use
what’s known as an oscillator.
When NASA recently shot a satellite
into deep space, it did it with a Frequency
device called a stable oscillator
to help with a mercury ion clock.
“When you have atomic clocks,
you almost always have a crystal
oscillator for short-term stability,”
Sloane says. “The heart of a crystal
oscillator is the quartz crystal itself.
We produce those in-house, starting
with raw bars of quartz … The same
thing with rubidium.”
Rubidium, which has medical uses,
is the main building block for many
of Frequency’s products because of
the element’s structure and stability.
“It has particular spectrum that are
useful for measuring transitions and
frequency,” Sloane says. “Rubidium
clocks are accurate to better than 100
nanoseconds per day. Our rubidium
atomic clocks are accurate to approximately
1 second in 10 million years.”
Some products are available in standard
orders, but many clocks are
customized with different frequency
outputs, sizes, and power outputs.
And the company is even trying to
be more precise.
“We’re developing a pulsed optically
pumped rubidium clock,” Sloane
says. “A conventional rubidium
clock uses a lamp that stimulates
the rubidium. The pulsed optically
pumped clock uses a laser to stimulate
the rubidium. It has much better
performance.
Satellites are among the
many applications for Frequency
Electronics’ atomic clocks.
(Getty Images)
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