Pendulum Clock with Atomic Precision

u19925 writes "Now you can get atomic clock precision out of your grandma pendulum clocks. Here is how it works: There is a camcorder fitted inside the clock which monitors the pendulum swing. It has an atomic clock signal receiver. It compares the pendulum swings with the atomic signal hearbeat. The camcorder also has an arm. If the pendulum clock drifts, then it uses its arm to push or pull the pendulum to make correction." It's not an April Fool's joke, but it is rather impractical.

Comments

Latency?

[shibbydude]

Wouldn't the latency of the net connection/camera/lever defeat the whole purpose of atomic precision? I mean, anyone can just reset thier clock once and a while to the "technical" standard time. Is this really accurate?

Re:Why not magnets?

[wwwillem]

We are used to /.-ers commenting without having read the article. That's even the fun of slashdot. But it appears that we have reached new levels: even people submitting a topic don't read their source anymore and everybody else follows like lemmings.

The New Scientist article doesn't mention any camera's, camcorders (why should you record this anyway, it's over in a second :-), or such. According to the article, the guy just uses a couple of IR sensors. That's a whole lot cheaper than camera's.

Still, this whole project is of course nuts. You love clocks (like I do !!) and than you have the honor to wind them every day, every Sunday at noon, or ..... That's just the fun of having old clocks.

Anybody can read the time from his cellphone. And using a GPS for the time-reading ... why doesn't the guy put a GPS on the pendulum and measure the frequency that way. That's cool!!!