Tic Toc

[DJH]

Is the forum still on 'Old Time'? It doesn't seem to have advanced to 'New Time' yet...

and it's slow by maybe 6 or seven minutes according to my clock on the wall...



Doug

 

[DJH]

I've 'bumped' this up myself because I'm being ignored... where's Feltwell? When he pointed out an error in the timekeeping everyone listened to him.

Doug

 

[Feltwell]

I'm here, but unless I'm having a "senior moment" I don't remember saying anything about time.

Apart from "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" of course.

 

[LadyArowana]

I was listening, honest I was, but since I'm variously 7 or 8 hours adrift anyway it's hard to know what's right to wrong!

 

[Penners]

Is the forum still on 'Old Time'?

No, Doug, it's known as "period time" - approximately 300 years, 1 hour and 6 minutes behind British Summer Time.

 

[Feltwell]

Is the forum still on 'Old Time'?

No, Doug, it's known as "period time" - approximately 300 years, 1 hour and 6 minutes behind British Summer Time.

Or about 1 hour and 6 minues behind the Isle of Wight.

 

[worms]

Doug, is that a one-handed clock?

 

[DJH]

Blimey! I hadn't noticed that before never noticed that worms, no wonder I'm always asking what the time is...

Sorry feltwell, it was someone else then that had a query about the time on here. Please accept my apologies, it's old age again.

Old time is referred to constantly over here until the clocks change again and this becomes 'old'time' and we move into 'new time'.

Doug

 

[Keith Bowman]

Sorry feltwell, it was someone else then that had a query about the time on here. Please accept my apologies, it's old age again.

Old time is referred to constantly over here until the clocks change again and this becomes 'old'time' and we move into 'new time'.

Doug

Period time: T'was me your worship. (But possibly in a parallel universe!). I got varying comments from others and gave up worrying about it.

Old time/new time: I rather like the phrases 'God's time' and 'Government time'

A similar problem with time arises with digital radios: they seem to run about 5 seconds behind normal (non-digital!) radios. It is particularly noticeable if you have one of each type on in adjacent rooms. My question is which set of GMT pips is correct? It must, logically be the first ones, so what will be the correct time when all the analogue broadcasts have been stopped and we only have digital pips? Will they still be several seconds late?

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Sorry feltwell, it was someone else then that had a query about the time on here. Please accept my apologies, it's old age again.

Old time is referred to constantly over here until the clocks change again and this becomes 'old'time' and we move into 'new time'.

Doug

Period time: T'was me your worship. (But possibly in a parallel universe!). I got varying comments from others and gave up worrying about it.

Old time/new time: I rather like the phrases 'God's time' and 'Government time'

A similar problem with time arises with digital radios: they seem to run about 5 seconds behind normal (non-digital!) radios. It is particularly noticeable if you have one of each type on in adjacent rooms. My question is which set of GMT pips is correct? It must, logically be the first ones, so what will be the correct time when all the analogue broadcasts have been stopped and we only have digital pips? Will they still be several seconds late?

Yes they will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal#Accuracy

 

[Keith Bowman]

Sorry feltwell, it was someone else then that had a query about the time on here. Please accept my apologies, it's old age again.

Old time is referred to constantly over here until the clocks change again and this becomes 'old'time' and we move into 'new time'.

Doug

Period time: T'was me your worship. (But possibly in a parallel universe!). I got varying comments from others and gave up worrying about it.

Old time/new time: I rather like the phrases 'God's time' and 'Government time'

A similar problem with time arises with digital radios: they seem to run about 5 seconds behind normal (non-digital!) radios. It is particularly noticeable if you have one of each type on in adjacent rooms. My question is which set of GMT pips is correct? It must, logically be the first ones, so what will be the correct time when all the analogue broadcasts have been stopped and we only have digital pips? Will they still be several seconds late?

Yes they will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal#Accuracy

Thank you for that link. Rather depressing really to see that technological progress means the time signals become less accurate!

 

[Keith Bowman]

Sorry feltwell, it was someone else then that had a query about the time on here. Please accept my apologies, it's old age again.

Old time is referred to constantly over here until the clocks change again and this becomes 'old'time' and we move into 'new time'.

Doug

Period time: T'was me your worship. (But possibly in a parallel universe!). I got varying comments from others and gave up worrying about it.

Old time/new time: I rather like the phrases 'God's time' and 'Government time'

A similar problem with time arises with digital radios: they seem to run about 5 seconds behind normal (non-digital!) radios. It is particularly noticeable if you have one of each type on in adjacent rooms. My question is which set of GMT pips is correct? It must, logically be the first ones, so what will be the correct time when all the analogue broadcasts have been stopped and we only have digital pips? Will they still be several seconds late?

Yes they will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal#Accuracy

Thank you for that link. Rather depressing really to see that technological progress means the time signals become less accurate!
Some years ago I made an armillary sphere as accurately as I could for this latitude. The 'equation of time' means it can be up to 20 minutes out compared to GMT at certain times of the year. In the new digital age that probably won't matter!

 

[Penners]

Some years ago I made an armillary sphere as accurately as I could for this latitude. The 'equation of time' means it can be up to 20 minutes out compared to GMT at certain times of the year.

Tut tut! Shoddy workmanship there. Keith. :wink:

 

[LadyArowana]

Some years ago I made an armillary sphere as accurately as I could for this latitude. The 'equation of time' means it can be up to 20 minutes out compared to GMT at certain times of the year.

Tut tut! Shoddy workmanship there. Keith. :wink:

I could live with the + or - 20 minutes, but cloudy days and hours between sundown and dawn might be more of an issue though*

*no doubt someone smart will come along and suggest a handy torch

 

[Penners]

I suggest a handy torch.

 

[DJH]

Is that a night and day one Keith? I used to make sundials for wall and horizontal fixing and one with a chap kneeling and holding it over his head...

Doug

 

[Penners]

...otherwise known as Atlas, perhaps?

 

[Keith Bowman]

What I want, what I really, really want, is one with a small cannon and a magnifying glass aligned to set off the charge at noon. I saw one in an antique shop near Covent Garden once but the price was astronomical! And it was set up to be used on the latitude of Paris. These days you'd probably be banged up for possessing the gunpowder anyway.

 

[Penners]

the price was astronomical!

Sort of appropriate for a sundial, I suppose....

 

[Flyfisher]

Thank you for that link. Rather depressing really to see that technological progress means the time signals become less accurate!

Not entirely depressing when you consider that a time signal is only necessary in order to correctly set analogue timepieces that are too imprecise to keep accurate time in the first place. Digital radios may introduce a delay of a few seconds but their clock displays should be as accurate as the reference clock and should also never need any manual intervention. Just like PCs that regularly reset their internal time and date clock using internet time servers.

We have a few 'radio controlled' clocks that synchronise to the MSF radio signal, itself controlled by an atomic clock and operated by the National Physical Laboratory. It is strangely gratifying to watch the second hand perfectly track the 'pips' on an analogue radio - and strangely annoying when listening on a digital radio. The clocks also automatically resent themselves to BST and GMT at the appropriate times of the year. All very impressive for about £15 (probably less these days).

Unfortunately, for £15 they are also rather plasticky and cheap looking, so ideal for the workshop and maybe the study (I used to have three set to different timezones :roll: ), but not really the thing for a more formal room. For that, there's little to beat a proper 'tic-tock' timepiece, regardless of its less than perfect accuracy. The same applies, I think, to a wrist watch, because when asked the time, who would ever respond "27 minutes and 32 seconds past two "instead of the perfectly adequate "nearly half past two" ?