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Stories and comments across the archive that link to nmm.ac.uk.
Stories · 2
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Stephen Hawking Unveils "Time Eater" Clock
gyrogeerloose writes "Stephen Hawking unveiled an unsettling clock in Cambridge on Friday. Designed by John Taylor — a British horologist and inventor whose thermostatic switch is incorporated in millions of electric appliances worldwide — the clock was conceived as a tribute to another British inventor, John Harrison. Harrison invented the grasshopper escapement in the early 18th Century, which resulted in extremely accurate mechanical time keeping and was instrumental in solving the Longitude Problem. Taylor's clock, which in entirely mechanical in operation but has no hands, uses a fearsome-looking 'demon grasshopper' as its escapement. 'I... wanted to depict that time is a destroyer — once a minute is gone you can't get it back' Taylor said. 'That's why my grasshopper is not a Disney character. He is a ferocious beast that over the seconds has his tongue lolling out, his jaws opening, then on the 59th second he gulps down time.' It also (purposely) only tells correct time once every five minutes. An excellent video of the clock in action, with an explanation of its workings by its inventor, is available on YouTube." -
Centuries-Old Longitude Clock Runs Again
douglips writes "BBC News has published a story about John Harrison's H4 chronometer and how it has been wound up for the UK's National Science Week. After 40 years of work [Harrison] proved in 1764 that a clock could be used to locate a ship's position at sea with extraordinary accuracy." Ah, the GPS system of its day. T. adds: This is the timekeeping device which Dava Sobel wrote about in Longitude .