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Windsor Castle: Changing hundreds of royal clocks
- teruakohatu 6y agoAnd that is just one, albeit the largest, British royal residence of many. Balmoral seems to have quite a few clocks as well if historical pictures [1] are anything to go by. They seemed to like stuffing in as many clocks as possible back in the day. 1. https://www.rct.uk/collection/2103688 https://www.rct.uk/collection/2103688
- majjam 6y agoI’m sure you’re right, but that picture shows a clock, a barometer and a calendar clock. Not, alas, three clocks :)
- herman_toothrot 6y agoDoes anyone know what those lines above the mounted deer are?
- teruakohatu 6y agoThey look like bells. I saw something similar in an old house where they were used to call servents and different bells corrosponded to different rooms.
- mordechai9000 6y agoYou can see them better in the high-res version: https://www.rct.uk/sites/default/files/collection-online/0/2/722963-1511190112.jpg https://www.rct.uk/sites/default/files/collection-online/0/2...
- jazzyjackson 6y agoIf you click the '+' to enhance you can make out what looks like bells that appear to have a pendulum underneath them, and the length of each line seems to follow a harmonic series so it must be some kind of musical alarm chime but I've never seen anything like it :) Can we also talk about how the vaulted ceiling has a similar, but altered motif as the floor? Really talented stuff!
- teruakohatu 6y agoYou are right about the floor/ceiling. Very impressive.
- gorgoiler 6y agoEach bell summons a servant to a particular room. The pendulum mechanism is on each bell. It is activated by the bell ring, and left swinging to indicate which bell or bells rang.
- jazzyjackson 6y agoAh, thank you! I couldn't conjure a reason you would need a pendulum on a bell, that makes sense.
- nsnick 6y agoBuckingham Palace is around twice the size of Windsor Castle.
- riffic 6y agoDaylight saving time is a practice about just as obsolete as the monarchy. edit: I really don't care if this gets downvoted or not. The monarchy is a horrible institution to glorify and daylight saving time is just as awful. Neither of these have any relevancy in a modern age.
- pathompong 6y agoI couldn't agree more. I live in Thailand. It's good we don't have daylight saving time. But I can't wait until we get rid of the other.
- chrisseaton 6y agoWhat would be a better option? A presidency like in the US? In the UK the Royal approval rating is something like 80%. In the US the Presidential approval rating is by design something like 50% because they’re party-political. Our head of state represents us more satisfactorily than theirs. Doesn’t that make it a better system in practice?
- MagnumOpus 6y ago> What would be a better option? A presidency like in the US? If you want to have a purely ceremonial head of state, it could still be an elected elder statesman rather than an aristo "by god's grace" and "divine" right. I.e. the German/Austrian/Italian presidential model where the president exercises about as much real power as queen Liz (i.e. a once-a-year state of the union speech). Or you go entirely without - since Liz refuses to use her corrective powers even in such blatant cases of procedural abuse like the proroguing of parliament, then the post is useless and the Prime Minister might as well be Head of State officially.
- chrisseaton 6y agoIn practice, people living under these options like it less than the British people like the Queen. For example elected elder statesman such as Higgins: approval rating around 70%. Prime Minister: approval rating around 34%. The Queen has an approval rating around 80%, sometimes as high as 90%.
- egypturnash 6y agoThis sounds like such a wonderful job.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago"horological conservator of Windsor Castle" - what an awesome job! Seriously, I feel like I should have tried harder in my youth to find some super obscure but interesting job.
- umvi 6y agoIt sounds romantic at first, but then you read "He plans to spend about 16 hours over the weekend changing all 400 clocks on the Windsor estate, including about 250 in the castle itself, along with seven tower clocks" and then it just sounds tedious.
- privong 6y agoTedious, but that's only twice a year. I think this one hits even harder: > When he's not changing the time, Fjodor's job includes spending one full day a week winding up the mechanical clocks to keep their pendulums swinging.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoYeah, but that's only twice a year. The bulk of his job is further down in the article: > The rest of his week is spent in his workshop servicing and repairing clocks, many of which are 200 to 300 years old. When a part breaks or wears out, Fjodor makes a replacement using a lathe, a milling machine and lots of hand tools. That sounds like an absolutely awesome job to me.
- part1of2 6y agoYup. The way I read it was “every job has pros and cons” and this one is particularly a joy
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- edge17 6y agoWho pays for this? Is it the British tax payer?
- londons_explore 6y agoThrough the royal grant, yes. But it's notable that the royal estate directly earns more money for the taxpayer than the royal grant, so effectively this didn't cost the taxpayer anything.
- irrational 6y agoExcept, if the royal family didn't exist, wouldn't the same amount of money still be coming in, only now 100% of it would by used for the taxpayer's benefit (supposedly)?
- djrobstep 6y agoYes, ideology really seems to confuse people with stuff like this. By way of illustration, consider two scenarios: A: The government sends the Royal Family 100 million pounds directly, every year. B: The government via property law enforces the Royal Family's ownership over a property portfolio, allowing them to collect 100 million pounds a year in rent. Which of these "costs the taxpaper" and which doesn't? Many people will insist that A does, and B doesn't. But in fact, both A and B do "cost the taxpaper" much the same.
- mjburgess 6y agoThat isnt what "cost the tax payer" means. And 'A' is false. The government does not 'send' the family anything, it takes £200m from the profits of their assets and leaves them with £100m. If the government ignores property rights and seizes assets arbitrarily, the whole economy would collapse. There is no cost to the taxpayer anywhere.
- djrobstep 6y ago
- mensetmanusman 6y agoOne of my favorite definition’s of time: “What is time? It’s what a clock measures.”
- Shared404 6y agoWell then, I must ask. What is a clock?
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIt’s a ruler for time
- jimnotgym 6y agoIt sounds like a wonderful opportunity for some Lean methodology. You could speed up this process massively by simply reducing the number of clocks to a sensible number.
- gorkish 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandringham_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandringham_time
- andrepd 6y agoMonarchies... always lovely.
- supernova87a 6y agoThey should just go with the high school clock mechanism, where all the clocks wait at the top of the hour for the central synchronizing signal and snap to the :00 all together. (And then once per day they wait for the midnight signal to catch up any clock that's that far off)
- chrisseaton 6y agoThey’re antique clocks - they’re not part of a system.
- supernova87a 6y agoI was kind of joking.
- ponker 6y ago"People are still amazed that at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace there is a small time zone in the kitchens, where the clocks are always five minutes fast. This is so that the food arrives on time... it's a constant reminder that this is important." I guess what I'm amazed at is that he thinks that the Queen of England getting her food on time is what qualifies as important.