Why is CLOCKS_PER_SEC not the actual number of clocks per second?

Question

I have just written this short C++ program to approximate the actual number of clock ticks per second.

#include 
#include 

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Answer 1

clock returns the amount of time spent in your program. There are 1,000,000 clock ticks per second total^*. It appears that your program consumed 60% of them.

Something else used the other 40%.

^*_{Okay, there are virtually 1,000,000 clock ticks per second. The actual number is normalized so your program perceives 1,000,000 ticks.}