5 ms·
The remarkable accuracy of the Trinity College clock
- tim333 11y agoPretty cool though I still prefer the Corpus clock a few yards down the road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock
- gerjomarty 11y agoI feel like the Corpus clock suffers somewhat by the fact that it's awkward to actually tell the time from it in daylight, as the blue LEDs that act as the hands are pretty hard to see unless it's after twilight.
- neil_s 11y agoIsn't this only accurate once every 15 minutes, or something as bad as that? Plus, it looks ghastly.
- stordoff 11y agoI enjoy the design of it, but it is worth bearing in mind that: > The clock is entirely accurate only once every five minutes. The rest of the time, the pendulum may seem to catch or stop, and the lights may lag or, then, race to get ahead. According to Taylor, this erratic motion reflects life's "irregularity".
- tim333 11y agoThat was done deliberately and must have been quite hard to achieve. He did it to make it more interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSKCuwnh_U&feature=youtu.be&t=1m59s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSKCuwnh_U&feature=youtu.be...
- user2994cb 11y agoOr consider the Queens' College sundial: http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/about-the-college/college-facts/reading-the-dial-in-old-court http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/about-the-college...
- stordoff 11y agoThe Selwyn sundial (my College, FWIW) is also interesting. Rather than showing solar time, it shows the hours since the last sunset and sunrise: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fhk1/Sundials/Selwyn/Selwyn.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fhk1/Sundials/Selwyn/Selwyn.pdf
- user2994cb 11y agoNice, I haven't seen that one (I was at Churchill, which doesn't have a decent sundial AFAIK, despite Frank King being a Fellow ("Chairman of the British Sundial Society" apparently - he did the Queens' recalibration as well as that Selwyn dial). Magdalene has a interesting modern dial too.
- neil_s 11y agoUpvoted for pointing me to The Conversation. Great find! Academic results presented in a readable fashion, but by the study authors rather than a Chinese Whispers of journalists ignorant of the topic.
- wronskian 11y agoThose interested by this article may enjoying browsing through Hugh Hunt's other pieces - he's done some pretty amazing things in the name of popular engineering! http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/ http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/
- leeoniya 11y agoalso interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt-Synchronome_clock https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt-Synchronome_clock
- amelius 11y agoWhat is keeping the pendulum swinging? What is the Q-factor of this clock?
- andrewpe 11y agoI just did a quick Google search and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz9nxzgtBaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz9nxzgtBaU It's wound up like any other old pendulum clock.
- smoyer 11y ago"This remarkable accuracy is normally expected of modern electronic timepieces, but the quartz watch on your wrist is probably only good enough to achieve a few seconds' accuracy a week. The Trinity clock with its various clever compensation systems is a remarkable testament to the importance of sound science and the longevity of good engineering." The quartz watch wasn't supposed to be more accurate than a tower clock. It was supposed to be more durable with about an equal accuracy. You can make a wristwatch more accurate at the expense of battery life, but you can't really wear a tower clock on your wrist!
- anotherevan 11y ago“Pigeons can also play havoc with time.” This has to be the best single sentence to take out of context. When I read that, my first thought was, “Especially if you’re trying to run NTP over RFC1149.”