[time-nuts] Are minutes more important in astronomy than seconds and hours ?

[Neville Michie]

The clock is of a type known as a regulator.
This style of design minimises all factors that could reduce performance.
One method is to reduce the number of moving parts to a minimum,
so there is a wheel for the escapement with the seconds hand on it (bottom),
a wheel for minutes, (middle), and a wheel for hours (top).
This eliminates extra wheels known as motion work to operate the hands, and 
reduces the friction.
The pinions will be of high count, say 20 teeth instead of 8 or 10 teeth,
the arbors will be jewelled (with end caps) and the escapement will be dead beat.
The seconds hand is kept small so as to minimise the weight on the bearings and the inertia.
The hours are for 24 hours, so the clock may have been adjusted to count sidereal 
time, (Star time) instead of solar time. Sidereal time has 366.25 days in a year.
The clock should perform much better than a domestic clock.
cheers, 
Neville Michie

> On 23 Nov 2019, at 19:29, Jean-Louis Rault <f6agr at orange.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> A friend of mine offered me a secondary electric clock that was in use at Observatoire Royal de Belgique, in Brussels, at the end of the 19th century.
> 
> The manufacturer is Peyer Favarger & Co, Neuchatel, Switzerland.
> 
> I'm wondering why the largest hand is used for minutes, and the smaller hands for hours and seconds
> 
> Any idea ?
> 
> Jean-Louis
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