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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.
Now if we could just invent something that would push or pull Grandma when she's not regular enough...
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?
We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time...
okay, the real question is why do this at all?
Geez Batman, how are we going to figure this one out?
Quick Robin, to the article!
There is a growing shortage of people who are familiar with the workings of the large mechanical clocks on churches and public buildings, as routine maintenance tasks such as winding the clocks become automated. Yet they still need to be put forward an hour in spring and moved back again in the autumn without damaging their fragile mechanisms, some of which are 250 years old.
Doesn't anyone read the friggin articles?
Nowhere in the article are the words 'camcorder', 'grandma', 'arm', etc.
It wasn't designed to fit into a grandmother clock and it certainly doesn't use a camcorder. It uses an infared sensor to sense pendulum location and a 'piston' to modify pendulum swing, and it is being used to automate maintenance on large clocks in churches, etc. It can also set the clock ahead and back an hour for daylight savings time.
Gotta be the worst case of can't be bothered to RTFA I've ever seen.
Now, anyone who thinks it would be better to replace the clocks in Big Ben with some modern electronic thing... well... probably ought to be shot. This doesn't seem like a bad way to get those big clocks to operate a good long time without human intervention.
Sweet! Now the 'tick-tock-tick' my grandma hears every day of her life ominously counting down to her impending death can be atomically accurate! Thanks Slashdot!
I feel that some informed comments are required for this topic. I am a clockmaker, yes I work on 200 year old clocks all the time; and I have to say that this is a really neat merging of modern and antique technology.
The clocks that are being regulated are tower clocks, they are observed by hundreds if not thousands of people a day. It would be nice to know that they are on time. It would also be a crime to rip out the old pendulum movement and replace them with an electric movement. Another feature is that the old antique system can run for several days in the event of a power failure, it just won't be quite as accurate.
The movements in these clocks are heavy cast iron units with large gears and very heavy pendulums. Using a magnet system to attempt to influence the timing rate would probably prove ineffective. However using some sort of system to raise or lower the pendulum by just a couple of millimeters will affect the timing rate by several seconds a day.
These clocks used to be wound once a week by hand and the time would have been reset at that time. These days most of these clocks have been converted to an automatic winding system, thus they see much less hands on maintenance, automatic systems for regulating the clock become much more attractive.
As a side note, the tower clock in London, commonly known as "Big Ben" ("Big Ben" is really the name of the bell that is used to count the hours) is regulated by adding or removing one or two old English Pennies, the one that were about the size of an old American Silver Dollar. The clock is regulated to be as on time as possible on the Queens Birthday and on New Years Eve.
Going even further afield some of you might get a kick out of the elaborate astronomical clocks that were designed in the 1800's. These were astonishing pieces of engineering that have been known to take an astronomer to figure out all of the settings required to set the clock.
I guess my passion for my vocation is showing, I hope that I was able to add something of interest.
Chronos
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.
:-), or such. According to the article, the guy just uses a couple of IR sensors. That's a whole lot cheaper than camera's.
..... That's just the fun of having old clocks.
... why doesn't the guy put a GPS on the pendulum and measure the frequency that way. That's cool!!!
The New Scientist article doesn't mention any camera's, camcorders (why should you record this anyway, it's over in a second
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
Anybody can read the time from his cellphone. And using a GPS for the time-reading
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...