TOPIC committed to official recognition of the “Brabants Kwartiertje”

A notorious phenomenon

The "Brabants kwartiertje" is a famous, but also notorious phenomenon in the Netherlands when it comes to keeping appointments. Often, this ‘quarter’ leads to confusion and misunderstanding. The standard time in the Netherlands is referred to as CET (Central European Time), but it is at odds with the "Brabants kwartiertje."

Official recognition of UTC+1¼

As a specialist in the field of embedded electronics and software, and deeply rooted in the Brabant area, TOPIC has been fully committed to giving the "Brabants kwartiertje" the official recognition it deserves. Introducing as part of this the definition of the NBQ time zone (North Brabant Quarter). While CET is defined as UTC+1, NBQ will be defined as UTC+1¼.

NMI certified time solution

One of TOPIC’s core expertise is Precision Timing, where the official time is transmitted with very high accuracy via computer networks. This time is referred to as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). The UTC standard is distributed and maintained by atomic clocks by, among others, the National Metrology Institute (NMI) in Delft. We are very proud to share that TOPIC is currently engaging our specific time solutions with the NMI in Delft.

Do you want to become an early adopter and be one of the first to make your timing solutions support NBQ? Or do you just want more information about embedded time solutions?

Read further below the image to discover more! 

Your time clocks available for NBQ

Well, we need to be honest. Although the “Brabants kwartiertje” is of course a well-known phenomenon, it is not so relevant that a special time zone needs to be invented for it. A date like April Fools' Day does lend itself well to broaching such a subject.

The expertise of TOPIC Embedded Systems in distributed computing and related synchronization is, however, no joke. So, no Brabant Quarter Hour, but clock accuracy down to the pico-second. Precision timing is a critical success factor or enabler for many systems. Check out our webpage about White Rabbit to see how this could also help you: https://topicembedded.com/products/system-on-modules/precision-timing