• pseudo@jlai.lu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    44
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Actually that is not funny to make fun of thing you don’t understand.

    A clock is a marvel using a plan to represent both numerically and in volume the time passing in an infinitly précise manner as it is continuous. Human reading precision can be chose at the level of the hour, the minute of the second. The 12-base allow a reading of the twelveths of the time period, the thirds, the halves and the quarters. The use of a circle make it possible to use it as a chronometer at any given start and follow the passing of time as your society see it.

    That is just the data representation part!

    The clock is also a marvel of ingeneering in the backend with very complex mecanism giving it a excellent precision and the abillity to run on many many different type of power.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      2 days ago

      the most impressive thing to me is that people managed to standardize and zero in a precise “second” especially back when seconds were kept by mechanical means. I wonder how they went about ensuring it.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 hour ago

          is it not dependent on mass at all? It’s possible given that this is the metric system that this is actually just a convenient retroactive truth about meters. I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily be, but then you’re accounting for gravity as well, which means you’re going to need a pretty effective approximation there. As well as a way to account for any mechanical losses as well.

          I’m not sure the metric system even existed when we developed the first mechanical time keeping devices.

          • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            21 hours ago

            It’s only 0.3% off. You probably have more uncertainty on the length of the pendulum.

            • Successful_Try543@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              16 hours ago

              0.3 % would correspond to 3 mm difference in length of the pendulum.
              After an hour, the difference between real and measured time would already be 10.9 s, and over an entire day, it would accumulate to 261.3 s, way too much for useful long term measurements.
              Yet, it is an useful approximation for qualitative measurements, e.g. when Galileo Galilei did his fall experiments, he might have used a prendulum instead of his pulse for measuring.

              • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                11 hours ago

                I’m not hauling this as the ultimate time keeping method. Friction in the system will mean you need to readjust it anyways. It’s just a neat fact that pi^2 ~= g

    • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      2 days ago

      Should watch an old BBC miniseries, Longitude.

      So much fun watching how crazy clocks are engjneered, and Jeremy irons.

      • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        I was fascinated by some of the crazy things people tried to get working that were discussed on that show. Things like keeping a pair of dogs, wounded by the same knife, as a way to synchronize time. As if they were some kind of quantum entangled particles.

        Edit: Found it!

        The powder was also applied to solve the longitude problem in the suggestion of an anonymous pamphlet of 1687 entitled Curious Enquiries. The pamphlet theorised that a wounded dog could be put aboard a ship, with the knife used to injure the dog left in the trust of a timekeeper on shore, who would then dip said knife into the powder at a predetermined time and cause the creature to yelp, thus giving the captain of the ship an accurate knowledge of the time.

        • pseudo@jlai.lu
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          Oh God… Weren’t this people happy water clock and other sandglass-like engine?

      • pseudo@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        2 days ago

        No it is from good sense and observations of technology inherited of extremly ancient civilisations.