The remarkable accuracy of the Trinity College clock

https://theconversation.com/the-remarkable-accuracy-of-the-trinity-college-clock-and-what-makes-it-tick-57195

by CarolineW • 10 years ago

70 15 10 years ago

tim3332• 10 years ago

Pretty cool though I still prefer the Corpus clock a few yards down the road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Clock

gerjomarty• 10 years ago

I feel like the Corpus clock suffers somewhat by the fact that it's awkward to actually tell the time from it in daylight, as the blue LEDs that act as the hands are pretty hard to see unless it's after twilight.

neil_s2• 10 years ago

Isn't this only accurate once every 15 minutes, or something as bad as that? Plus, it looks ghastly.

stordoff2• 10 years ago

I enjoy the design of it, but it is worth bearing in mind that:

The clock is entirely accurate only once every five minutes. The rest of the time, the pendulum may seem to catch or stop, and the lights may lag or, then, race to get ahead. According to Taylor, this erratic motion reflects life's "irregularity".

tim3332• 10 years ago

That was done deliberately and must have been quite hard to achieve. He did it to make it more interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSKCuwnh_U&feature=youtu.be...

user2994cb2• 10 years ago

Or consider the Queens' College sundial:

http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/about-the-college...

stordoff2• 10 years ago

The Selwyn sundial (my College, FWIW) is also interesting. Rather than showing solar time, it shows the hours since the last sunset and sunrise:

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fhk1/Sundials/Selwyn/Selwyn.pdf

user2994cb2• 10 years ago

Nice, I haven't seen that one (I was at Churchill, which doesn't have a decent sundial AFAIK, despite Frank King being a Fellow ("Chairman of the British Sundial Society" apparently - he did the Queens' recalibration as well as that Selwyn dial).

Magdalene has a interesting modern dial too.

neil_s2• 10 years ago

Upvoted for pointing me to The Conversation. Great find! Academic results presented in a readable fashion, but by the study authors rather than a Chinese Whispers of journalists ignorant of the topic.

wronskian• 10 years ago

Those interested by this article may enjoying browsing through Hugh Hunt's other pieces - he's done some pretty amazing things in the name of popular engineering! http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/

leeoniya• 10 years ago

also interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt-Synchronome_clock

amelius• 10 years ago

What is keeping the pendulum swinging?

What is the Q-factor of this clock?

andrewpe• 10 years ago

I just did a quick Google search and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz9nxzgtBaU

It's wound up like any other old pendulum clock.

smoyer• 10 years ago

"This remarkable accuracy is normally expected of modern electronic timepieces, but the quartz watch on your wrist is probably only good enough to achieve a few seconds' accuracy a week. The Trinity clock with its various clever compensation systems is a remarkable testament to the importance of sound science and the longevity of good engineering."

The quartz watch wasn't supposed to be more accurate than a tower clock. It was supposed to be more durable with about an equal accuracy. You can make a wristwatch more accurate at the expense of battery life, but you can't really wear a tower clock on your wrist!

anotherevan• 10 years ago

“Pigeons can also play havoc with time.”

This has to be the best single sentence to take out of context. When I read that, my first thought was, “Especially if you’re trying to run NTP over RFC1149.”

The remarkable accuracy of the Trinity College clock

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