On Friday, November 18, 2011 11:34:45 AM Kent A. Reed did opine: > On 11/18/2011 2:52 AM, Peter Blodow wrote: > > Kent, > > I have a mechanical clock that was used to control and synchronize > > about 100 slave clocks in our company. It is built very simple, but > > uses two important principles: the pendulum is made if invar steel > > and the driving chain is endless, the weight being wound up > > electrically every minute by the same amount that it has been sinking > > during that minute. The minute slave impulse was used for this. Thus, > > the weight of the chain is to be neglected. For decades, all the > > employees came to work as the clock ruled. Being a physicist, too, I > > could not let such a device just go down the drain. When it was > > replaced by an electronic radio controlled system, I salvaged it - > > literally - out of the junk container, gave it a goldish outer > > appearance and placed it on the wall behind the desk chair in my > > director's office. When I retired, I took it home, and it will be > > placed right next to the other wall clocks I am keeping for > > sentimentality. > > ny > > Peter: > > That's the same master-slave purpose Hope-Jones designed his Synchronome > time transmitter to serve. They were used throughout factories, schools, > railway systems, first in England and then elsewhere. It also employs an > invar pendulum rod and a bit of dissimilar-metals magic at the pendulum > bob to achieve reasonable temperature compensation and yet another > method to achieve "perpetual" running time involving a precise impulsive > force applied every 30 seconds, a so-called gravity escapement. There's > a nice Shockwave animation on a Swiss website of the entire > Shortt-Synchronome system > (http://homepage.bluewin.ch/electric-clocks/Shortt.htm). The driving > force for the Synchronome gravity escapement is delivered by the > L-shaped arm on the right---Gene, this animation is for you too. > Not for me. I have shockwave flash 11.1r102 according to about:plugins but it won't play that. FF is 8 or 9.
> They had their competitors in many countries, for example, IBM in the > US, Siemens in Germany. Some years ago I bid on eBay for a Siemens > master clock stated to have been retired from the Physics Department at > TU Berlin but others wanted it even more than I did. Obviously a lot of > us don't like to see these things "go down the drain"! That I'm wearing > a perfectly adequate $10 watch doesn't come into it. > > I have a similar affection for vintage analytical balances---lovely > combinations of metal, wood, and glass---which mostly went straight into > dumpsters when electronic balances were introduced. The few that are > left and still in decent condition go for outrageous prices, in part I > suspect because they are so attractive to the eye. > > In my advancing age, I have become quite fond of vintage measurement > technology and have a meager collection of standard resistors, weight > sets, analytical balances, a WWII-vintage Jo-block set, and the like. > As you might imagine, my wife is not nearly so fond as I am of these > things cluttering our house :-) > > And now back to EMC2. > > Regards, > Kent > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure > contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, > security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this > data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> The kind of danger people most enjoy is the kind they can watch from a safe place. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
