Corpus Clock
en.wikipedia.org
Corpus Clock
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Corpus Clock
#2Here's a video showing a grasshopper escapement in motion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TBWJC0HYRE
Re: Corpus Clock
#3My immediate thought was a morbid clock that used a live insect to measure they time. Once the creature dies you know that a certain amount of time has passed.
Re: Corpus Clock
#4In case anyone is interested in the history of watchmaking, etc. there's a great book titled Longitude: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-...
An accurate marine chronometer was necessary for reliable navigation in order to calculate one's longitude. It turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem that was ultimately solved by John Harrison, who invented the Grasshopper escapement, which the Grasshopper Clock uses.
I think some of us will find Harrison to be very relatable -- more hacker than scientist and never satisfied with his work. He kept coming out with new and improved versions even after he won the Royal Society's prize, IIRC.
Re: Corpus Clock
#5The grasshopper escapement was invented by John Harrison, who built the first clocks that could keep time at sea. These were used to calculate Longitude. There's a nice short biography called Longitude that covers his story.
Re: Corpus Clock
#6In case anyone is interested in the history of watchmaking, etc. there's a great book titled Longitude: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-... An accurate marine chronometer was necessary for reliable navigation in order to calculate one's longitude. It turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem that was ultimately solved by John Harrison, who invented the Grasshopper escapement, which…
Beat me to it...
I just finished Longitude and it was a great read! Harrison is an interesting character since he really spent his whole life working on the same problem of keeping time at sea. A whole lot of perseverance.
Re: Corpus Clock
#7Directly behind it is the student library, with an echoey three story tall open space [1] (why would you design a library like that?!). When you're there at 2am you can hear the chains dropping and hitting the coffin on the hour, which is not at all terrifying...
[1] A terrible picture of the space, where the back of the clock would be on the left: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/9b/1c/e19b1c997dc06c45e8b9...
Re: Corpus Clock
#8In case anyone is interested in the history of watchmaking, etc. there's a great book titled Longitude: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-... An accurate marine chronometer was necessary for reliable navigation in order to calculate one's longitude. It turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem that was ultimately solved by John Harrison, who invented the Grasshopper escapement, which…
In Our Time podcast had a great episode on this really recently: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vyn6 Great stuff!
Re: Corpus Clock
#9Here’s a bit of clock-related JS animation I did many years ago, which helps to explain how the LED hands work on the Corpus chronophage clock:
https://dotat.at/random/clock.html
more words on my blog:
https://fanf.dreamwidth.org/93037.html
I also wrote some notes on a talk given by John Taylor on how he made the Corpus clock
https://fanf.dreamwidth.org/96948.html
The Wikipedia page asserts that the clock is purely mechanical, without any computer programming, but I believe (based on what Taylor said in his talk) that the clock has a computerized regulator which makes it tick erratically, and keeps it synced to the MSF radio time signal. But Taylor is very cagy about it, saying he prefers the clock’s weirdness to be mysterious.
(if you have an electric kettle, it’s very likely the element / switch / thermostat were made by Strix, John Taylor’s company)
of course the video link in my blog post 12.5 years ago is now broken but it might well have been the same as this video blurb from John Taylor on YouTube
Re: Corpus Clock
#10In case anyone is interested in the history of watchmaking, etc. there's a great book titled Longitude: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-... An accurate marine chronometer was necessary for reliable navigation in order to calculate one's longitude. It turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem that was ultimately solved by John Harrison, who invented the Grasshopper escapement, which…
Lol! Purchasing this book was the very first online purchase I ever made from a very cool new upstart online bookstore called Amazon. <- Funny name I think. Not sure if it will stick around...