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Oxfordshire clock still keeping village on time after 500 years
- smitty1e 1y ago"You really need to take the upgrade. Enough centuries have passed." "Oh, all right." > A modification also saw the installation of a mechanised winding system, ending the requirement for somebody to climb the narrow, winding staircase each day to the clock room to do the job by hand.
- pm215 1y agoI couldn't find anything with better image quality, but youtube seems to have some 2014 footage of the clock in action (so pre restoration work): https://youtu.be/ix0IxTqgavE https://youtu.be/ix0IxTqgavE
- Oarch 1y agoThis has an almost hallucinatory quality
- londons_explore 1y agoThe video probably had to be transmitted by morse code.
- madaxe_again 1y agoPrepare your ship of Theseus arguments now, gentlefolk, for that mechanism does not look like a 16th century one to me. The frame, perhaps, but the rest of it looks Victorian at the very oldest, more likely from the 1960s restoration, when people were not so much into conservation as they were into modernisation. I don’t think this detracts from the picture of it as a very old clock, as it has almost continuously functioned as a clock since its inception - if anything, it makes for a nice palimpsest of horological technology, and speaks of a continuity of care that is markedly rare.
- LeoPanthera 1y ago“I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century. “So it isn’t the original building?” I had asked my Japanese guide. “But yes, of course it is,” he insisted, rather surprised at my question. “But it’s burnt down?” “Yes.” “Twice.” “Many times.” “And rebuilt.” “Of course. It is an important and historic building.” “With completely new materials.” “But of course. It was burnt down.” “So how can it be the same building?” “It is always the same building.” I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.” ― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
- rvz 1y agoMaintained systems built to last as long as 500 years is what engineers should be aiming to build, especially striving for both quality and to be highly battle tested in hardware. This one didn't break 25 years ago with the Y2K bug and it won't break in 2038 either. A vibe-designed version of this however could not even last 4 years (AI introduces leap year bug) or even 6 months (clock will break going back and forth adjusted for DST)
- pqtyw 1y ago> This one didn't break 25 years ago with the Y2K bug and it won't break in 2038 either. Well yes but it had to be manually wound and adjusted by someone on a very regular basis to continue functioning. It's much more efficient than a human having to look at a sundial every 15 minutes and ring the bells manually but effectively the same thing, not an automated system. > clock will break going back and forth adjusted for DST) So you just fix it manually twice a year? Seems like a significant improvement : D
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago>Well yes but it had to be manually wound and adjusted by someone on a very regular basis to continue functioning. So does most software.
- pqtyw 1y agoYes, that was kind of my point.
- Someone 1y ago> This one didn't break 25 years ago with the Y2K bug and it won't break in 2038 either. It definitely broke in 2015. FTA: “In 2015, one of the hammers used to strike the six bells came away and fell into the mechanism, jamming it and silencing the clock.” > A vibe-designed version of this however could not even last 4 years (AI introduces leap year bug) Irrelevant, as this clock doesn’t show dates. > or even 6 months (clock will break going back and forth adjusted for DST) That, this clock suffers from, too.
- swayvil 1y agoI like the scale of that machinery. Very manageable.
- dylan604 1y agoYeah, it's interesting to think of a clock with no precision gears, but since there's no hands it opens up methods with less complications /s
- julian55 1y agoWe have a similar faceless clock in our village although perhaps not as old. https://leigh-on-mendip.org.uk/church-clock https://leigh-on-mendip.org.uk/church-clock
- alfanick 1y agoI live in a small Swiss village. We have two churches, they ring their bells every hour (number of dong-sounds is equal to the hour). But, they're slightly out of phase, so you can hear two separate churches' bells. And one of the churches also rings their bells every 15 minutes (1-ring for each quarter). On top of this at 6:00am it rings a whole rhapsody of sounds for whole 5 minutes - "wake up people, time to go to work on a field!". Initially it may be annoying, eventually you just get used to it, in the end you actually learn to figure out the time from the bell sound and make use of it.
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- cogogo 1y agoI live in a neighborhood in Boston with a couple of big churches. The hourly bells are useful to teach the kids how to tell time. Especially when out and about. Thankfully none of the bells wake us up but I do appreciate them.
- nandomrumber 1y agoDoes the speed of sound have anything to do with them appearing to sound non-synchronous?
- idontwantthis 1y agoShouldn’t there only be two spots where it is synchronous ? Edit: I was imagining intersecting circles for some reason. All places not equidistant would hear them out of sync.
- spiritplumber 1y agoYou can probably use that to estimate your location!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mistrial9 1y agopre-Renaissance the mechanical clock was a show of power for Christian civilization.. one of the many benefits, along with literacy and the written word in all its uses, of the Christian society versus others.. and versus others it was.. on the edges of the Christian world were raiding tribes, marching armies and slaving of all kinds, from the great Central Asia all the way into modern France, from the East, Vikings from the North and African continental peoples from the South. The Christian world sometimes came by the peace of the Savior, and also by the Sword, chain and taxes. Clocks are very impressive.. useful.. and now there is almost no escape from them? What was lost? This is a particularly impressive and useful clock. The benefits to the town are manifold. In these times, it might be worth examining their shadows, as well.
- dylan604 1y ago> Clocks are very impressive. I mean, once you have a clock, anyone can tell time. I'm more impressed by those that can tell time by time of year and position of celestial objects. It's December and Orion is 20° above horizon so it must be close to...
- verisimi 1y ago> Clocks are very impressive.. useful.. and now there is almost no escape from them? What was lost? What was lost is control of time for the individual. Time is such an externalised concept now, we can barely conceive of an internal, natural sense of time.
- 2earth 1y agoThis blew my mind. I'm a mechanical engineer from Wantage, where this clock was made, (but had no knowledge of it!) I wrote a blog post reverse engineering (including a detailed CAD model) and discussing a very similar but nearly 200 year older clock at the (relatively nearby?) Salisbury cathedral. It's a good chance to reflect on longevity and design philosophy. Seems relevant to share! https://2earth.github.io/website/20241003.html https://2earth.github.io/website/20241003.html
- Archelaos 1y agoSomewhat related: I was impressed when I once visited Salisbury Cathedral, where there is a restored clock vom 1386 on display. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Cathedral_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Cathedral_clock
- 2earth 1y agoHey, I visited SC and was super fascinated by it too! As I commented below I CAD modelled it on my blog: https://2earth.github.io/website/20241003.html https://2earth.github.io/website/20241003.html
- saltwatercowboy 1y agoLovely work! Good to hear that someone took the time to digitize it. The cathedral is simply astounding.
- londons_explore 1y agoI wonder if old stuff like this lasts longer when operating or when sitting idle in a display? Operational means there is wear and someone must occasionally do maintenance etc. Being on display unmoving obviously has no wear, but also more chance of being forgotten about, rotting, etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- layer8 1y ago"In terms of accuracy, it's pretty accurate." What more could you want?
- Rebelgecko 1y agoIronically the article currently says ""In terms if accuracy, it's pretty accurate."
- mike-the-mikado 1y agoIt may be in Oxfordshire now, but only since 1974. For most of its life it was in Berkshire (until they decided to that the county should follow the M4 motorway, rather than the river Thames).
- b112 1y agoSo for clarity, it didn't move.
- mattgrice 1y ago"In terms if accuracy, it's pretty accurate." :) LGTM (sign off on PR)
- sagarpatil 1y agoOlder than United States.
- Daub 1y agoFYI… before the railways it was quite common for one village to have a different agreed ‘time zone’ to villages just a few miles down the road. This time was defined by the clock of the village church. It was the railways which put an end to this.
- Doctor_Fegg 1y agoServices at Oxford’s cathedral (Christ Church) still begin at five minutes past the hour because of this.
- euroderf 1y agoIs it also the source of European university classes starting at quarter after ?
- eleveriven 1y agoStandardized time is such a weirdly modern invention when you think about it... before trains, no one really needed it
- Someone 1y agoThe general population didn’t need it, but there was considerable interest in having a form of standardized time as far back as 1530. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Transport_of_chronometers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Transport...: “The first to suggest traveling with a clock to determine longitude, in 1530, was Gemma Frisius, a physician, mathematician, cartographer, philosopher, and instrument maker from the Netherlands. The clock would be set to the local time of a starting point whose longitude was known, and the longitude of any other place could be determined by comparing its local time with the clock time.”
- cnewey 1y agoWell now, I never expected to see my village on Hacker News. I can actually see this church from my bedroom window - and as if by magic the bells just started ringing 9am!
- justincormack 1y agoUsed to have family there, saw the clock once many years ago.
- eleveriven 1y agoThat's such a wholesome reminder of how deeply intertwined timekeeping used to be with daily life and community
- collyw 1y agoSundial on a building near my place still keeping the time as well. No idea how old it is.
- rajnathani 1y agoFor those non mechanical engineers like me, such clock towers which were based on gravity (verge escapements (thanks TIL via ChatGPT)) require rewinding manually ever so often - thus this isn't a clock which continuously worked for 500 years obviously.
- ljsprague 1y ago[flagged]