3 ms·
> If I land on a desert island the very last thing I need is a watch. A watch is there to be able to synchronize with outside events, and those are in short sup
by nordsieck 3y ago
> If I land on a desert island the very last thing I need is a watch. A watch is there to be able to synchronize with outside events, and those are in short supply on a desert island. If there are no other people that you need to meet, trains whose time tables matter or ships that need conning you don't need a watch.
A watch lets you calculate longitude, which could be very valuable indeed.
There's a reason why accurate time keeping was one of the holy grails during the age of sail.
- jacquesm 3y agoWhy would it be useful to you to be able to calculate longitude on a desert island?
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoI suppose you could use it to work out where you need to go as you attempt to sail across the Pacific in your improvised raft?
- jacquesm 3y agoGood luck :) I just hope I brought enough books or a musical instrument with me. I'll be fine. And if not, oh well, there are much worse places to be than a desert island, with or without a watch. The thing you don't want to find out is that what you thought was a desert island is in fact inhabited by some tribe that thinks you might be tasty.
- WillAdams 3y agoTo put that information into a bottle so as to be rescued --- this is the crux of Jules Verne's _In Search of the Castaways_.
- numpad0 3y agoTo look up closest Starlink passes and send SOS by messing with it using a mirror, of course.
- ooterness 3y agoIf you want accuracy, a mechanical watch is not the right answer. Update: Best I've seen is +/-0.3 sec/day (3 ppm). Quartz can exceed this by 10x-100x. An atomic clock can beat that by many orders of magnitude. But I'm definitely not lugging around a sextant and a cesium clock just in case.
- ip26 3y agoOk, but why do you need to calculate longitude of the island five years later? Seems like a one-and-done thing.