MT:Bowles wrote: " When clocks were as much as a minute or so out of synchronization it was normal procedure to make the needed adjustments. Somehow, Bowles' "a minute or so" became "a minute or two" in your post. And yet you are the one who claims that I am misrepresenting witnesses. Good job, Kid!
Good job indeed, “kid”. Direct quote from Bowles:
“Therefore, it was not uncommon for the time stamped on calls to be a minute to two ahead or behind the "official" time shown on the master clock. Accordingly, at "exactly" 10:10, various clocks could be stamping from 10:08 to 10:12, for example.”
And you chide Martin for “not understanding” what he reads…
Well what I understand is that I originally said this:
"Bowles does not say that the dispatcher's clocks could differ by two minutes. He said that the dispatcher clocks were kept to within a minute of each other."
As I made clear later, this was a reference to this sentence from Bowles' manuscript:
"When clocks were as much as a minute or so out of synchronization it was normal procedure to make the needed adjustments"
So when you replied to my post, starting off with this:
"By the way, just because it was 'normal procedure' to reset the clocks when they were..."
It's pretty clear that you are paraphrasing the statement that I'd quoted. But then your sentence went on:
"By the way, just because it was “normal procedure” to reset the clocks when they were “a minute or two” apart..." (I'll get to the rest shortly)
So now you have Bowles saying something here that wasn't in the original sentence. I figure it was due to some memory lapse or bit of inattention on your part. But your latest response kinda implies that you deliberately took a piece of one sentence and spliced it into another with the intent to change the meaning of that sentence. I hope this is not the case. After all, people are liable to understand that kind of behavior to be dishonest.
No, as to the end of your sentence:
"...[that] doesn’t mean that the maximum they could ever be off is two minutes."
You are technically correct. The problem is, if the radio dispatcher clocks were that far off, we'd see it in the data. We don't. So far, you have presented no evidence whatsoever that any of the dispatcher clocks were out of the spec Bowles described.
MT:Anyway, once Bowles established that the standard was to keep the dispatcher clocks within a minute of each other, then you need to come up with an actual reason to believe such an exception was in play that afternoon. Good luck. Bowles himself couldn't manage it.
You got it. “During busy periods this was not readily done.”
This would presume that one of the clocks was running out of spec. Since you haven't shown that to be the case, the quote you proffer is not an answer.
By the way, nobody (apparently) ever described how “city hall time” was set or calibrated.
None of the analyses I've performed so far require that anything be known about the City Hall clock system. That question seems to be moot.
MT: Bowles noted that the radio recording system didn't stop recording until there was 4 seconds of silence. Therefore, if there is a place where the recording shuts of and loses time, there should be at least 4 consecutive seconds of silence. If you listen to the channel one recording during this time, that doesn't happen from the beginning of the Bowley transmission until after the Callaway one. This includes the section where both 1:19 timestamps are located
How would you know that? The recording you are listening to has been dubbed, spliced, and edited. Incidentally, the transcript at https://www.jfk-assassination.net/dpdtapes/tapes2.htm shows “(Long pause, 15 seconds)” right before the Benavides/Bowley “hello police operator” call.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that the channel one recordings have been "edited" or "dubbed" outside of where consecutive recordings have been spliced together. There are a handful of splice points between 12:20 and 1:20, but any hope that channel one is some massive spliceapalooza is badly misplaced.
What I wrote about the beginning of Bowley's transmission doesn't count on any of the recording before Bowley's transmission starts...or on any of the recording after the second "1:19" timestamp. Therefore, those 15 quiet seconds don't apply here. BTW, Bowles notes that the system was activated by sound on the channel, and points out that transients could start the recorder. If the transient is short enough, it can be come and gone before the Dictabelt machine has time to get the recording head up to speed, and will either be minimally audible or not audible at all. Multiple such instances that are not interrupted by an actual voice transmission would easily account for a 15 second long stretch of silence.
