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1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch

chrisfenton.com

21–30 of 79 posts

Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch

#21
post #13

This would be a great prop for time travel scifi movie. Protagonist travels to 1991 and tries to convince scientist to help him. When asked for a proof, shows Gray C90 Wristwatch. "Our real computers are different, but I show you this because it does not pollute the timeline."

This is refreshing. A premise for a time travel movie that is both accurate in terms of its portrait of computers, and it doesn't present basic time travel "oopsies" .

Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch

#23
post #13

This would be a great prop for time travel scifi movie. Protagonist travels to 1991 and tries to convince scientist to help him. When asked for a proof, shows Gray C90 Wristwatch. "Our real computers are different, but I show you this because it does not pollute the timeline."

This is refreshing. A premise for a time travel movie that is both accurate in terms of its portrait of computers, and it doesn't present basic time travel "oopsies" .

I'm definitely packing this with me if I ever time travel.

Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch

#28
I love to imagine this kind of thing dug up by an alien civilization. That it displays the moons of Jupiter will be a fun puzzle and a source of wonder. “Obviously”, they will say, “these people must have worshipped Jupiter as a god and used the position of its moons to keep time.” But the pieces of the puzzle will never quite fit.

Who knows, maybe the Antikythera mechanism or the pyramids were a similarly ludicrous prank?

Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch

#29

> The display shows a free-running simulation of Jupiter and 63 of its moons. For convenience, I just plot the X/Y coordinates of each moon in the ecliptic plane. The ephemerides come from the HORIZONS server that NASA operates, at a specified date and time. The J90 just dumps a new frame whenever the Teensy has pulled the previous one, so with a teensy (ha!) bit of calibration on the micro controller side, it would…

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