Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[gandalfg8--- via time-nuts]

As well as the CSPAN interview on youtube there's also a printed transcript 
at...



https://www.c-span.org/video/?169779-1/tuxedo-park



That's a very good read in itself, and with a rather interesting observation 34 
minutes and 17 seconds in:-)...



Jennet Conant
He bought three Shortt clocks. They were very famous astronomical clocks, the 
most exact clocks in the world. In fact, Big Ben is a Shortt clock. They were 
fabulously expensive. He bought no less than three for his 
laboratory.--



There is a CSPAN author interview on youtube.  Not much about time-nuttery but 
lots of stories about the people involved.  Her grandfather was president of 
Harvard during WW II and he was tangled up with much of the wartime research.

A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science: Finance, Investing 
(2002)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6U2yUNQRY8
57 minutes.
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[time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Eric Scace]

> On 2020 May 14, at 14:21 , Skip Withrow  > wrote:
> […snip…]
> 
> A question for TVB (or anyone else that might know), what happened to
> the three Shortt clocks that he [Loomis] had?

   About 100 Shortt-Synchronome systems were manufactured. There is not a 
central database of locations for the surviving instruments, as far as I know. 
I know the location of maybe a dozen or so — but there are plenty more than 
that in existence. Some are still in the hands of their original owners; some 
are in museums; others are in private collections.

>  Also of interest would be how
> many still exist today, and how many in running condition

   Very few of the survivors of which I am aware are presently operating. The 
one at NIST’s library in Gaithersburg, for example, was maintained by a retired 
staff member. A few years ago he moved from the DC metro area. A vacuum leak 
developed in the master and the system stopped.

   The ClockWorks museum in London has had difficulty keeping their system 
operating. There are some tricks to its setup, the knowledge of which has not 
been well-maintained.

> (and
> Fedchenko

   Fedchenko engineered 4 pendulum-based systems:
a clone of the Shortt-Synchronome, of which the highest known serial number is 
#27. These were manufactured by Etalon in Leningrad. At present three complete 
(master + slave) systems are known exist, and two slave-only units. I’m not 
sure that any of the three complete systems are operational; two may be capable 
of starting up but their ability to run for long periods of time is unknown.
AChF #1 was a first generation prototype of the system for which Fedchenko is 
famous. It was placed in the first floor of a working building at KhGIMIP 
(Kharkov State Institute for Weights and Measures) and tested for 3 years 
(1955-1958) against the KKh-3 quartz clock. This model was not placed in 
production. Unless Etalon has it in archives, it may not have survived.
AChF #2 was a second generation prototype built in 1956 — maybe lost or perhaps 
in Etalon archives.
AChF #3: The highest known serial numbers, #36 and #37 (incomplete), came to 
light in the last six years. Thirteen survivors are known. Of these, four are 
in museums: one in Switzerland, one at the Greenwich Observatory, and two at 
the ClockWorks Museum (London). The remainder are in private hands. There is 
also an orphaned slave clock in private hands whose current location is unknown.
The Greenwich one was installed by Etalon as a gift and ran for a number of 
years but has stopped for unknown reasons — possibly a vacuum leak.  
Unfortunately it’s built into a display cabinet that would have to be 
disassembled in order to service the clock.
When I last visited, one of the two systems at Clockworks was operational but 
not kept in continuous service.
The operational condition of the system in Switzerland is unknown.
At least one system in private hands is kept operating, but not instrumented 
for measurements.

> and Riefler)?

   Riefler made a vast number of models. I don’t know of an inventory of the 
partial-vacuum tank clocks.

> There is something very satisfying about the tick-tock of a pendulum
> clock, though I realize the Shortt's were not direct drive.

   The seconds-driving contacts of the Shortt-Synchronome make plenty of “tick 
tock”! Synchronome used a weight-assisted contact mechanism to ensure a 
reliable “make” and the weight gets reset by a solenoid each second. With care, 
one can do a lot to quiet down the noise to acceptable residential levels. But 
that’s another lengthier discussion.

> 
> Regards,
> Skip Withrow


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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Hal Murray]

t...@leapsecond.com said:
> Yes, the book about Loomis by Jennet Conant is highly recommended.

I thought it was a great read.

There is a CSPAN author interview on youtube.  Not much about time-nuttery but 
lots of stories about the people involved.  Her grandfather was president of 
Harvard during WW II and he was tangled up with much of the wartime research.

A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science: Finance, Investing 
(2002)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6U2yUNQRY8
57 minutes.



Not particularly time-nutty, but if you liked Tuxedo Park, there is a good 
chance you will enjoy this book too:
  The Invention that Changed the World
  How a small group of RADAR pioneers won the second world war and launched a 
technological revolution
Robert Buderi

He is one of the writers contributing comments to the PBS/American Experience 
story about Loomis.




-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.




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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Skip Withrow]

The Alfred Loomis story is very interesting.  Thanks for bringing it
up again.  The PBS American Experience episode is certainly worth
watching.

A question for TVB (or anyone else that might know), what happened to
the three Shortt clocks that he had?  Also of interest would be how
many still exist today, and how many in running condition (and
Fedchenko and Riefler)?

There is something very satisfying about the tick-tock of a pendulum
clock, though I realize the Shortt's were not direct drive.

Regards,
Skip Withrow

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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Clint Jay]

I've just received my June Radcom which contained news of the passing of a
Walter Blanchard who was involved in the development of Decca Navigator and
Loran C, he also worked on a GPS forerunner navigation system called
"Transit".

There's an obit at www.rsgb.org/sk which may contain more detail if there's
interest.

On Wed, 13 May 2020, 17:37 Gary Woods,  wrote:

> On Wed, 13 May 2020 09:23:45 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >Given all his accomplishments, he must have been a
> >"Renaissance Time_Nut"!
>
> My favorite quote from a bio of Loomis; he was shown the super secret
> British magnetron, and an engineer was trying to explain how it made
> high-power microwaves.
> Loomis listened and said, "Oh, it's a whistle!"
> (I dealt with it's megawatt descendent in the APS-20 radar).
> --
> Gary Woods O- K2AHC   Public keys at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic, or
> get 0x1D64A93D via keyserver
> fingerprint =  E2 6F 50 93 7B C7 F3 CA  1F 8B 3C C0 B0 28 68
>
> --
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
>
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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Gary Woods]

On Wed, 13 May 2020 09:23:45 -0600, you wrote:

>Given all his accomplishments, he must have been a
>"Renaissance Time_Nut"!

My favorite quote from a bio of Loomis; he was shown the super secret
British magnetron, and an engineer was trying to explain how it made
high-power microwaves.
Loomis listened and said, "Oh, it's a whistle!"
(I dealt with it's megawatt descendent in the APS-20 radar).
-- 
Gary Woods O- K2AHC   Public keys at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic, or get 
0x1D64A93D via keyserver
fingerprint =  E2 6F 50 93 7B C7 F3 CA  1F 8B 3C C0 B0 28 68 

-- 
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus


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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Bob Martin]

Thanks to all who replied. Book on order.

Given all his accomplishments, he must have been a
"Renaissance Time_Nut"!

Bob

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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message , Tom Van Baak 
writes:

>Besides being the man behind LORAN, and a hundred other clever ideas, he 
>also pushed the state of the art in timekeeping, comparing the world's 
>best pendulum clocks against the best quartz clocks:

While was instrumental in many ways for LORAN, calling him "the man
behind LORAN" is probably overselling it a bit, as most of the
actual work was done by J. A. Pierce.

As far as I know, it is not even clear if Loomis got the idea for
hyperbolic navigation himself or if he had heard rumours about
Dippy's work in the british 'Gee' system.

Some years back I saved a copy of JAP's unofficial biography, and
when it later disappeared from the web, I put it in a corner of
my own homepage:

http://phk.freebsd.dk/misc/jack_pierce.html

It's a good read.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp   | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer   | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[David G. McGaw]

You can watch the PBS American Experience program on him, "The Secret of 
Tuxedo Park" here:


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/secret-tuxedo-park/#part01

David N1HAC

On 5/12/20 7:56 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote:

Yes, the book about Loomis by Jennet Conant is highly recommended. The
"time nut" pages are here:

http://leapsecond.com/pages/loomis/Loomis-Tuxedo-Conant-p66-p70.pdf

Besides being the man behind LORAN, and a hundred other clever ideas, he
also pushed the state of the art in timekeeping, comparing the world's
best pendulum clocks against the best quartz clocks:

http://leapsecond.com/pend/pdf/1931-RAS-Analysis-Loomis-Chronograph-Brown-Brouwer.pdf
http://leapsecond.com/pend/pdf/1931-RAS-Precise-Measurement-Time-Loomis.pdf
http://leapsecond.com/pend/pdf/1932-Modern-Precision-Clocks-Loomis-Marrison.pdf

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis

"Alfred Lee Loomis (1887—1975) A Biographical Memoir by Luis W. Alvarez"
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/loomis-alfred.pdf

"Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That
Changed the Course of World War II"
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.1570779

"Talking with Alfred"
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shapin/files/shapin_lrbtuxedopark.pdf

"Alfred Lee Loomis - Obstetric ultrasound"
http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/loomis.html

"The scientist-tycoon whose work on radar helped win WWII"
http://www1.lasalle.edu/~didio/reviews/rev_tuxedo_park.htm

/tvb


On 5/12/2020 4:24 PM, Bob Martin wrote:

/Does anyone know about Alfred Loomis and his />/early precision time measurements? 
/>//>/According to the article in the link below, he />/was also involved in WWII radar and 
the creation of Loran. />//>/http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/loomis.html />//>/bob/


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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Tom Van Baak]

Yes, the book about Loomis by Jennet Conant is highly recommended. The 
"time nut" pages are here:


http://leapsecond.com/pages/loomis/Loomis-Tuxedo-Conant-p66-p70.pdf

Besides being the man behind LORAN, and a hundred other clever ideas, he 
also pushed the state of the art in timekeeping, comparing the world's 
best pendulum clocks against the best quartz clocks:


http://leapsecond.com/pend/pdf/1931-RAS-Analysis-Loomis-Chronograph-Brown-Brouwer.pdf
http://leapsecond.com/pend/pdf/1931-RAS-Precise-Measurement-Time-Loomis.pdf
http://leapsecond.com/pend/pdf/1932-Modern-Precision-Clocks-Loomis-Marrison.pdf

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis

"Alfred Lee Loomis (1887—1975) A Biographical Memoir by Luis W. Alvarez"
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/loomis-alfred.pdf

"Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That 
Changed the Course of World War II"

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.1570779

"Talking with Alfred"
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shapin/files/shapin_lrbtuxedopark.pdf

"Alfred Lee Loomis - Obstetric ultrasound"
http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/loomis.html

"The scientist-tycoon whose work on radar helped win WWII"
http://www1.lasalle.edu/~didio/reviews/rev_tuxedo_park.htm

/tvb


On 5/12/2020 4:24 PM, Bob Martin wrote:

Does anyone know about Alfred Loomis and his
early precision time measurements?

According to the article in the link below, he
was also involved in WWII radar and the creation of Loran.

http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/loomis.html

bob

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Re: [time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[John Ackermann N8UR]

Check out "Tuxedo Park" by Jennet Conant -- it's all about Loomis and
his very interesting life.

John


On 5/12/20 7:24 PM, Bob Martin wrote:
> Does anyone know about Alfred Loomis and his
> early precision time measurements?
> 
> According to the article in the link below, he
> was also involved in WWII radar and the creation of Loran.
> 
> http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/loomis.html
> 
> bob
> 
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[time-nuts] Alfred Loomis - an early time nut

[Bob Martin]

Does anyone know about Alfred Loomis and his
early precision time measurements?

According to the article in the link below, he
was also involved in WWII radar and the creation of Loran.

http://www.ob-ultrasound.net/loomis.html

bob

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