An electro-optic clock recovery circuit comprising an electro-optic modulator circuit operatively coupled to; a photodetector circuit; a buffer circuit operatively coupled to said photodetector circuit; a voltage controlled oscillator operatively coupled to said buffer circuit and to said electro-optic modulator circuit; wherein the electro-optic modulator circuit receives and modulates a multi-channel input data stream, the photodetector circuit responsive to the modulated input data stream drives the voltage controlled oscillator in a phase locked loop through the buffer circuit, and the modulator circuit is responsive to the voltage controlled oscillator and is driven at a harmonic of the voltage controlled oscillator. A method for the recovery of a single channel clock rate from a optical time division multiplexed data stream whose data rate is a multiple of the base rate comprising the steps of: modulating a multi-channel data stream with an electro-optic modulator circuit, detecting the modulated data steam with a photodetector circuit, controlling the frequency of a voltage controlled oscillator with the voltage associated with the photodetector circuit; driving the electro-optic modulator circuit with the output of the voltage controlled oscillator wherein the transmission window of the electro-optic modulator is toggled at a harmonic of the frequency of said voltage controlled oscillator.