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Why Edinburgh's Clock is Almost Never on Time (bbc.com)
Arrive in Edinburgh on any given day and there are certain things you can guarantee. One of which is, the time on the turret clock atop The Balmoral Hotel is always wrong. By three minutes, to be exact. From a report: While the clock tower's story is legendary in Edinburgh, it remains a riddle for many first-timers. To the untrained eye, the 58m-high landmark is simply part of the grand finale when surveyed from Calton Hill, Edinburgh's go-to city-centre viewpoint. There it sits to the left of the Dugald Stewart Monument, like a giant exclamation mark above the glazed roof of Waverley Train Station. Likewise, the sandstone baronial tower looks equally glorious when eyed from the commanding northern ramparts of Edinburgh Castle while peering out over the battlements. It is placed at the city's very centre of gravity, between the Old Town and the New Town, at the confluence of all business and life. Except, of course, that the dial's big hand and little hand are out of sync with Greenwich Mean Time.
This bold irregularity is, in fact, a historical quirk first introduced in 1902 when the Edwardian-era building opened as the North British Station Hotel. Then, as now, it overlooked the platforms and signal boxes of Waverley Train Station, and just as porters in red jackets met guests off the train, whisking them from the station booking hall to the interconnected reception desk in the hotel's basement, the North British Railway Company owners wanted to make sure their passengers -- and Edinburgh's hurrying public -- wouldn't miss their trains. Given an extra three minutes, they reasoned, these travellers would have more time on the clock to collect their tickets, to reach their corridor carriages and to unload their luggage before the stationmaster's whistle blew. Still today, it is a calculated miscalculation that helps keep the city on time.
This bold irregularity is, in fact, a historical quirk first introduced in 1902 when the Edwardian-era building opened as the North British Station Hotel. Then, as now, it overlooked the platforms and signal boxes of Waverley Train Station, and just as porters in red jackets met guests off the train, whisking them from the station booking hall to the interconnected reception desk in the hotel's basement, the North British Railway Company owners wanted to make sure their passengers -- and Edinburgh's hurrying public -- wouldn't miss their trains. Given an extra three minutes, they reasoned, these travellers would have more time on the clock to collect their tickets, to reach their corridor carriages and to unload their luggage before the stationmaster's whistle blew. Still today, it is a calculated miscalculation that helps keep the city on time.
She was always fashionably late, so I started telling her we had to be somewhere an hour earlier. It's worked for 30 years.
Stuff that mattered in 1902.
Some people I know set their car clocks a few minutes ahead to help them arrive on time. Every now and then I'll forget the quirk and think I'm late somewhere with them.
Stop setting your clocks incorrectly and leave when you need to like an adult.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
If you formalize the system, in this case having an accurate clock, people attempt to game the system by thinking they have more time than they do, because people are perpetual optimists.
If you deformalize the system, and have the clock represent an approximate value, they become concerned that they do not have enough time, and rush to get there early so that they will be on time.
Alternative Right.
Another world famous clock to attract Russian tourists on day trips from Moscow. :P
This is a non story. It is known to the people that matter, those who live and work in 'Old Reekie'.
Oh, and it is "Waverley Railway Station". Mention "Train Station" to most people in the City and they'll wonder what planet you are from.
Yours, a resident of Leith.
She was always fashionably late, so I started telling her we had to be somewhere an hour earlier. It's worked for 30 years.
This sad technique also works for PhBs who's style is management by crisis. I once had a boss who had an "unexpected" crisis every couple of weeks - usually the big cheese was coming to review or such. Two week's work had to be done in the next week. Having been warned by previous burned-out victims, my progress report was always at least a week behind as actual productivity didn't seem to matter.
There was much moaning and pissing about impossibilities when his next "unexpected" crisis arose even though the milestone was already in hand. This seemed to please him more than my "somehow" meeting the crisis deadline. It was the most relaxed, and goofing-off work environment I ever had.
That's why this sort of thing doesn't really work. My mother does something like that at home and she's still late to virtually everything.
The problem is that eventually, you kind of figure out that it's not the real time, you've actually got X extra minutes and tend to use them. Folks who don't have time management issues and treat it like what it is, the time, don't really have that issue.
"That the clock is wrong every day of the year is not technically true, either. Its time is stretched to accommodate an annual event. On New Year’s Eve, or Hogmanay as Scots call it, the tower welcomes a special one-off house call, when an engineer is dispatched to remedy the timekeeping error. “Plain and simple, the clock needs to be right for the traditional countdown to the midnight bells,” said Davidson, leading our two-man party back down to the hotel’s grand lobby. “Beyond that, everyone relies on it being wrong.”
with the clock in my car. Works great.
Only a moron could possible think that this "works" in any way.
You fucking set the clock, and you know how far off it is. This doesn't fool anyone.
If it works at all, it's because you know you need to be there by such-and-such time... just like a normal clock that wasn't set by a dipshit.
You might be trolling, but my phone does tell me when to leave for my flights.
To all you unhappy grouches:
This story leads into what could be a bit of interesting neuro-psych research. I know for a fact (Trigger Warning: Anecdotal Evidence Alert) that, even though my alarm clock has been 10 minutes ahead for at least 10 years, I still react to it by behaving as though it were correct time -- even while I consciously understand that it isn't.
I'm willing to (Trigger Warning Two) extrapolate and guess there are other folks like me.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
If it tells you to catch them from a railway station I'd suggest not using it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."