Welcome to the NavList Message Boards.

NavList:

A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

Compose Your Message

Message:αβγ
Message:abc
Add Images & Files
    Name or NavList Code:
    Email:
       
    Reply
    Re: Intended High Resolution Chronometer
    From: Brad Morris
    Date: 2014 Feb 26, 14:59 -0500

    Frank

    Sure, with a lot of finagling, you could read it to a few seconds.  Its just a simple wall clock though, meaning the rate is going to be wild.  Additionally, with that imbalanced hand, time will run faster on the down hill side compared to the uphill side!

    So the time value would be read to some arbitrary number of seconds (its resolution) but the accuracy of the time value obtained would be all over the map, subject to variation with temperature, friction, orientation with respect to gravity & etc.

    The photo was meant to be good hearted fun.  We've all debated the various time standards and the adjustments, to what seems like hundredths of a second.  Forget hundredths, this clock keeps days!

    Brad

    On Feb 26, 2014 2:07 PM, "Frank Reed" <FrankReed@historicalatlas.com> wrote:

    Thanks for the photo, Brad. Here's a little fun with it....

    Using late 18th century technology, a clock with a one-week "day" hand, just like the one in your photo (ever so slightly modified!), would be readable to a precision of +/- TWO SECONDS of time --without adding any extra hands to the clock. Surprising, huh? Here's how I got there:

    That "day" arm on that clock moves through 51.4° in one day. And we know that the Moon moves across the sky about 13° per day (four times more slowly since the Moon takes four weeks to orbit the Earth), and yet late 18th century navigators could measure that motion to an accuracy on the order of +/-15 seconds of time, equivalent. I'm assuming a really good sextant and all other conditions excellent. A factor of four faster motion for the "day" arm compared to the Moon would yield +/-4 seconds of time. But the sextant's double-reflection cuts the Moon's motion in half: each day it moves only 6.5° as an angle measured on the arc of the sextant (just another way of saying that the sextant's arc angle of 60° actually contains 120° of divisions on the arc). That's another factor of two. Therefore we could read this clock to +/2 seconds. You can also go the direct route and ask how +/-5 arcseconds on the arc compares to 51°, and you'll get the same result (again, divided to a precision of 10 seconds is equivalent to 5 seconds on the actual arc). Of course to make that happen in practice, you would need to divide the dial around the rim of the clock as finely as the scale on a high-end 18th century sextant. A dial made of platinum might push the price of the clock up a bit. You would also need to attach a vernier to the end of the "day" hand. A magnifying glass would be a necessity! But there would no other moving parts.

    Of course reading a vernier is a real nuisance, so it would be easier to add some rotating scales or hands that are geared to the main motion of the clock. In other words: add hour, minute, and second hands, as expected on a normal, functioning clock designed to read to seconds. Turning back to sextants and their ability to read fine angles, that, after all, is ALSO exactly what happened to sextants in the early twentieth century! A micrometer is a "minute hand" geared to the main motion of the index arm. It took over a hundred years for that simple concept to be applied to the sextant itself.

    -FER

    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    NavList message boards and member settings: www.fer3.com/NavList
    Members may optionally receive posts by email.
    To cancel email delivery, send a message to NoMail[at]fer3.com
    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    : http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=127041

       
    Reply
    Browse Files

    Drop Files

    NavList

    What is NavList?

    Get a NavList ID Code

    Name:
    (please, no nicknames or handles)
    Email:
    Do you want to receive all group messages by email?
    Yes No

    A NavList ID Code guarantees your identity in NavList posts and allows faster posting of messages.

    Retrieve a NavList ID Code

    Enter the email address associated with your NavList messages. Your NavList code will be emailed to you immediately.
    Email:

    Email Settings

    NavList ID Code:

    Custom Index

    Subject:
    Author:
    Start date: (yyyymm dd)
    End date: (yyyymm dd)

    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site
    Visit this site