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from the maintaining-the-perfect-4:20-for-our-stoners-today dept.
The Guardian has an article on the verification of a 250-year-old claim by clock maker John Harrison over the accuracy of his designs:
After a 100-day trial, the timepiece known as Clock B – which had been sealed in a clear plastic box to prevent tampering – was officially declared, by Guinness, to be the world's "most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air".
It was an intriguing enough award. But what is really astonishing is that the clock was designed more than 250 years ago by a man who was derided at the time for "an incoherence and absurdity that was little short of the symptoms of insanity", and whose plans for the clock lay ignored for two centuries.
[...] At a conference, Harrison Decoded: Towards a Perfect Pendulum Clock, held at Greenwich yesterday, observatory scientists revealed that a clock that had been built to the clockmaker's exact specifications had run for 100 days during official tests and had lost only five-eighths of a second in that period.
The same story is also covered at The Telegraph and The Independent.
Wikipedia has more background on John Harrison. NOVA's Lost At Sea: The Search For Longitude (transcript) may also be of interest.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:04PM
Do you have ANYTHING supporting ANY your claims, either the current or historical ones you make? Harrison's time pieces were proven out first without going to sea, so they knew "such a small device" could keep time, then it was sent to sea.
Also, having a large ornamental clock isn't because people think they're more accurate. It is because they are huge and ornamental. They make for lovely furniture, and some of them have very nice selection of chimes. It is the same reason some people have big, beautiful wooden dining room furniture. It isn't some holdover in thinking that this furniture is sturdier, it is because it is a fashion style.
Anyone who has more than a day's experience with grandfather clocks know them to require a certain amount of fussing. What the long pendulum gives you is a much easier way to tweak the pendulum. There is an adjustment weight on the back that lets you change the center of mass of the pendulum. A nice, long pendulum lets you fine-tune the clock and you can dial it in pretty well in terms of accuracy. If the pendulum was very short, it would be much harder to adjust the weight position to make minor time adjustments.
Man, talk out your ass much?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by fnj on Monday April 20 2015, @09:42PM
[Entire fucking rant redacted]
Jesus, take a chill pill, no-name asshole.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @11:28PM
Yeah, I guess it is a rant if it shows someone they are wrong. Sorry. I shouldn't call out obvious BS. We run the danger of poisoning the well with facts. Every opinion is valued, even if it is horribly wrong.