Huh always thought because of the blue LEDs it was electronic and dismissed it as "nice but would have been better if mechanical", turns out it it's actually a feat of mechanical clockmaking.
Corpus Clock
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Corpus Clock
#12Video of clock with narration by inventor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCqGtvTA36k
Re: Corpus Clock
#13Here’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 m…
It's a bit surprising that this was invented so recently, when the basic idea of the dial ought to work mechanically. (When I had that idea I searched for "vernier clock" and that was how I first heard of this one.)
Re: Corpus Clock
#14videos of it don't really do it justice
definitely worth seeing if you're in the area (though it's right on King's Parade so you would anyway!)
Re: Corpus Clock
#15I worked with the artist who designed and built the sculptural parts of this clock: Matt Sanderson. His page on the clock is here: http://www.sanderson-sculpture.com/projects/millenium-clock/
Re: Corpus Clock
#16In 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…
I agree with your recommendation of Dava Sobel's book. I recommend it to many of my (science) students, as either (a) a present for a family member who has an interest in science, navigation, history, etc. or (b) a hint that students can give to family members who want to give them a gift.
Many of these students have told me how much they enjoyed the book, and none have told me the reverse.
Undergrads can be a tough audience, so this reception is a very good recommendation for this book. And this is not the only engaging book Sobel has written ... I would recommend any of them.
Re: Corpus Clock
#17Directly 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...
Questionable library design is something of a speciality in Cambridge. Ask the lawyers...
Re: Corpus Clock
#18In 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…
There was a great PBS series made based on that book: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/longitude/
(That site is 23 years old!)
Re: Corpus Clock
#19From https://youtu.be/cCqGtvTA36k?t=58
"the clock ... depicts time as a wave coming out from the center of the universe".
I see some liberal handling of scientific lingo here :).
Re: Corpus Clock
#20The 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.
To elaborate a bit, the significance of that was that without accurate clocks navigators could only reliably figure out their latitude at sea.
Imagine if you are trying to navigate to some far away island that is southwest of your starting position. If you tried to sail the direct route, when you reached the correct latitude you would have no idea if you are east of the island or west of the island.
Instead, you'd have to sail south or mostly south until you got to the right latitude, then sail west until you reached the island. This could be a much longer journey.
Even if you are going for something much bigger than an island, like a particular port on a continent, not knowing longitude made it difficult. Say you are going from Spain to someplace in South America. Unlike the island example above, you might think you can just try for the shortest route because if you end up too far west when you reach the right latitude, you'll at least be able to find the coast of the continent and come down that.
But that coastal territory might belong to Spain's enemies who might not take kindly to a Spanish ship in their waters without permission. To avoid that risk, you have to do just like you would do in the island case--go south until you are at the right latitude and then go west.
A practical and reliable way to find longitude at sea was seen as something that would confer major economic and military advantages to any country that had it over those that did not, and so governments provided funding and prizes and other incentives to encourage development of a solution.