I 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.
I 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".
Nice, 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).
Upvoted 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.
Those 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/
"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!
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.”
15 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 59.2 ms ] thread> 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".
http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/about-the-college...
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fhk1/Sundials/Selwyn/Selwyn.pdf
Magdalene has a interesting modern dial too.
What is the Q-factor of this clock?
It's wound up like any other old pendulum clock.
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!
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.”