[time-nuts] Non electrical time-nuttery

[Bob Camp]

Hi

How about a rotary pendulum on a quartz fiber spring with some kind of trick magnets to drive it  / read it out? Put the pendulum and spring inside an evacuated glass envelope to get around the vacuum pump issue. The enclosure could be pretty small. 

Drive the magnets with a second external clock, and feedback compensate it. Let the external clock do all the readout via a very normal gear and pointers system. The trick would be getting the feedback loop to work purely mechanically with enough gain to "unload" the master pendulum.

Bob


On Jan 9, 2010, at 2:07 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:

> OK.. So we're moving back in electrical technology....
> But what about mechanical?  Could modern technology get a substantial (>order of magnitude) improvement over 19th century chronometers (either pendulum or balance wheel or whatever).  I know there's some really good quartz fiber torsional spring schemes, but I think they still need electrical means to keep them moving and to read it out.
> 
> So how good can one do with a mechanical, hydraulic, (or chemical, I suppose) system?  Let's assume it has to have a "direct" readout that is human readable by a causal bystander.  (this starts to sound like the 10,000 year clock or whatever it is..)
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