71–80 of 92 posts
In the 90s a friend of mine made a watch that just showed the year. The year precisely , that is to say, considering leap seconds. This is much harder than it sounds because the protocol used (DCF) transmits the leap year info spread out over a time span before the year change. So suddenly your stupid receiver + display needs memory and compute.
This person's build is amazing! Mostly photos, but still super cool to see how "from scratch" it is - if you're expecting "bought a few components from Swiss companies" then, yeah, it's not that! I submitted this a week ago and sadly it sank without trace (poor choice of posting time I suspect), so I'm trying again. I have no affiliation with the builder.
> Mostly photos Me and maybe a dozen others vastly prefer this. I almost never want video.
In case you haven't seen it before, my absolutely favorite watch resource: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
One of the reasons I love mechanical watches is that I've never tried to fully understand them, and the idea that there's a purely mechanical thing, that does something seemingly so simple yet magically and reliably, gives me a sense of wonder and appreciation for engineering and art. I'm really on the fence about whether or not I want to read this amazing looking article or just live on in ignorance :)
I wear mechanical watches, and find them not to be "outdated technology" as a lot of people assume. My automatic skeleton watch requires no winding, batteries, or charging, which makes it a more practical way to tell time than an electronic watch in my opinion.
I suppose one could argue that a solar powered quartz watch is even more practical for the same reasons... but the automatic is nearly the same in practice, and is a lot more fun, and looks cooler.
Occasionally I'll fall into Wikipedia rabbit holes of pre-computer solutions to problems, usually involving lots of gears and springs and a lot of cleverness on the designers end. It fascinates me how much stuff has become trivial since the advent of the transistor.
https://imgur.com/a/making-mechanical-watch-VmYL7qF link direct to the gallery.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has got to be one of the best explanations of anything I've ever seen in any subject. Thank you for sharing - hope you have a great day.
You're in for a treat then! Bartosz has a bunch of other insanely well done explainers on his website, with easily inspectable JavaScript too. Some of my favourites are the watch, the engine and the GPS ones, though they're all fantastic.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42443229
If you'd like to read a comprehensive blog post about the intricate mechanisms that make a mechanical watch work, with amazing interactive visualizations, I recommend reading this blog post[1] by Bartosz Ciechanowski, a person famous on HN for his high quality blog posts that explain things comprehensively, with nice visualizations. (the #1 top post on HN right now is his new blog post about the moon [2]). [1] https:…
This person's build is amazing! Mostly photos, but still super cool to see how "from scratch" it is - if you're expecting "bought a few components from Swiss companies" then, yeah, it's not that! I submitted this a week ago and sadly it sank without trace (poor choice of posting time I suspect), so I'm trying again. I have no affiliation with the builder.
> Mostly photos Me and maybe a dozen others vastly prefer this. I almost never want video.