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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Timekeeping and sight time records
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2005 Mar 17, 14:39 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2005 Mar 17, 14:39 -0500
Vic- Acutally, the term "chronometer" no longer refers to a reliable time source. AFAIK: Technically, if a watch passes an actual timekeeping test a chronometer certificate can be awarded to that individual watch--certifying that it can keep time to better than 2 minutes per day. That was good, for a Rolex in 1957. It was obsoleted in the 60's by the Accutron (a mechanical watch with an electronic heartbeat) which was never given certification but was guaranteed to better than two minutes a day simply as a sales point. (One minute was typical, and easily reached.) And then the quartz watches in the 70's made one minute a month easily possible--if you had a better quartz watch that offered any provision for adjusting the rate. The cheaper ones didn't and don't. Now that sub-minute accuracy is easily achieved....Perhaps we need to petition the Swiss (ahem) for a new standard with a new name? Chronometers are *so* fifties.