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Not too sure of the point of this apart from pride in constructing something that may stand the test of time (pardon the pun). How accurate is it going to be after 10 000 years, I guess it will rely on somebody or something to keep correcting it as time goes by even if it doesn’t require a battery change. IMHO the makers of this clock and its housing would have been better to put their time and money towards solving some of the worlds problems or advancing our scientific knowledge rather than building this white elephant.
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I may have been a little harsh with my criticism of the clock builders pride and joy. I wonder if it indicates the year, decade and century. There would certainly be some slow moving cogs in the mechanism if it does.
I was fascinated by the story of H1 and H2 that played out hundreds of years ago and I wonder if that was part of the motivation for designing this clock. However back then accurate timekeeping was a matter of life and death for the worlds seafaring navigators and the development of the chronometer that followed from H1 and H2 was one of the most important technological advances of the time. The same cannot be said of this millennia clock, it is at best a curiosity but I do admire the time, effort and commitment that the makers of this clock have given to their project.-
Hi Greg,
I think the clock will be indicating minute and hour, and has chimes once a day as long as you wind them up. It also has special animations, kinda like cuckoos. there’s one that goes annually, one every decade, one every century, one each millennium, and one that goes once every 10 000 years.It also has some pretty clever error correcting mechanisms – it uses a pendulum for hours and minutes, but it has a correction mechanism that uses solar measurements to make sure the time doesn’t drift out of whack too much.
It’s not a groundbreaking scientific apparatus, but it is an impressive piece of engineering, and it’s also a very bold artistic statement. And I reckon it’s pretty cool.
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