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Frank,

A form of hacking isn't it ? I would call it a hack correction. 

When setting a Casio digital wrist watch I hack it to the exact tick by short wave then subtract 1 second on the actual observation to allow for the time it takes the eye to go from scope to watch. If fractions of a second are needed then a stop watch is started on the exact short wave tick then stopped or split on the mark. This method works good when rating quartz clocks and watches. The stop watch method also works well for preseving time during twilight observations then round to the nearest whole second. During the day I just read the wrist watch and subtract a second.

Greg Rudzinski

From: Frank Reed
Date: 2016 Aug 23, 21:09 -0700

There has to be a name for this. Anyone?

Suppose I am timing an event like a Sun sight using a digital time display that shows seconds, but no fractions of a second. The time in the display really ought to be set half of one second ahead of the actual time. That way when I look at the device, it will display, e.g. 12:04:30 for times with the seconds of true time (UT of whatever) ranging from 29.5 to 30.5. The displayed time rounds to the nearest second. I think in practice it has been standard to display tenths when we're really worried about marking the time accurately to the nearest second. But what should the practice be if tenths aren't available??

Frank Reed
Conanicut Island USA