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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Have mechanical clocks' time passed? [[OfPeripheral Interest]]
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2013 May 25, 14:05 -0700
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2013 May 25, 14:05 -0700
Well put, Geoffrey, especially the bit about checking the accuracy of your $1000 mechanical watch against the $25 quartz one hidden in the drawer....
In studying for an MBA (not sure what it's called outside the US), business students make extensive use of case studies, real world problems and how they were or were not solved (my favorite was one about contact lenses for chickens). I do hope someone puts together a case study on how to market a inferior watch technology as a superior piece of jewelry, as seems to be the case).
Okay, "contact lenses for chickens?" When chickens are held together in tight quarters (like an egg farm) they peck on each other (hence the phrase "pecking order") and can injure each other. Farmers solve (or at least solved) the problem by clipping off part of the chicken's beak. This case study involved how to market and gain acceptance for a new technology, a contact lens that basically gave the chicken poor vision and therefore prevented him/her from seeing other chickens and therefore feel the need to peck at them. When I was studying (ooops, was that 25 years ago, gasp?!) it was allegedly the most popular case study issued by Harvard University's Business School.
In studying for an MBA (not sure what it's called outside the US), business students make extensive use of case studies, real world problems and how they were or were not solved (my favorite was one about contact lenses for chickens). I do hope someone puts together a case study on how to market a inferior watch technology as a superior piece of jewelry, as seems to be the case).
Okay, "contact lenses for chickens?" When chickens are held together in tight quarters (like an egg farm) they peck on each other (hence the phrase "pecking order") and can injure each other. Farmers solve (or at least solved) the problem by clipping off part of the chicken's beak. This case study involved how to market and gain acceptance for a new technology, a contact lens that basically gave the chicken poor vision and therefore prevented him/her from seeing other chickens and therefore feel the need to peck at them. When I was studying (ooops, was that 25 years ago, gasp?!) it was allegedly the most popular case study issued by Harvard University's Business School.
From: Geoffrey Kolbe <geoffreykolbe@compuserve.com>
To: luabel@ymail.com
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 12:48 PM
Subject: [NavList] Re: Have mechanical clocks' time passed? [[OfPeripheral Interest]]
On the contrary. All gentlemen of refinement of whom I am acquainted, wear mechanical watches. The price tags are usually hideous and the movements are generally Swiss. After the collapse of the mechanical watch industry in the 1980's, there has been a gradual rebuilding of the market based on the watch-as-art, and now it is a thriving global business. With modern manufacturing methods, exotic materials and new innovations still being wrung out of this ancient technology, (such as the Daniels coaxial escapement), modern mechanical watches can have quite respectable accuracy too - as checked by comparing their timekeeping with the quartz watch you keep in the draw.. Mostly though, mechanical watches are how people of a certain style recognize each other in a crowd. Geoffrey: http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=124143
