[time-nuts] Antique pendulum clocks

[Matthew D'Asaro]

You are not the first to try this. The usual method for timing mechanical clocks is either acoustic (a microphone picks up the sound of the escapement) or optical (a sensor is blocked from light by the pendulum). The optical method is more accurate but more cumbersome to setup.

Matthew

Sent from Matthew D'Asaro's iPhone

> On Nov 20, 2019, at 6:18 PM, Adrian Godwin <artgodwin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:01 AM Bill Beam <wbeam at gci.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Most people interested in this problem have been dead for about 200 years.
>> 
>> I knew there was a reason why I didn't feel so well lately ..
> 
> 
> I have an electric pendulum clock by Bulle. A coil swings in a short arc,
> following a curved magnetic polepiece. At some point, contacts close and
> provide a timed sustaining impulse to the coil.
> 
> Out of sheer pigheadedness, I am attempting to monitor the movement with
> antique (perhaps not quite so antique) timing equipment. I have an HP456A
> current probe to capture the impulse instance, an HP 5275A counter to
> measure the period and an HP101A oscillator to provide a reference. ADEV
> calculations might be done by an HP9815 calculator or perhaps an HP41 if I
> can't find the 9815's parallel interface. Non-HP equipment is permitted but
> nothing suitable has come up so far.
> 
> A difficulty at the  moment is that the contacts bounce somewhat, making
> the impulse timing poorly defined. I haven't yet got as far as seeing any
> mechanically caused pattern to the errors.
> 
> Thanks to Tom for giving me more distractions to read :)
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