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

[Steve Allen]

On Sat 2019-11-23T09:29:09+0100 Jean-Louis Rault hath writ:
> I'm wondering why the largest hand is used for minutes, and the smaller
> hands for hours and seconds

If the purpose of the clock was to determine what time it was from an
astronomical observation then a second hand was not sufficient.
Determining the clock offset required some sort of graphical marking
of seconds that could be reviewed after the fact.

If the purpose of the clock was marking the begin and end of exposure
of a photographic plate then seconds were not very important, and the
hour was something that could be kept in the observer's head while
marking the log book, and in the dark the big minute hand was a big
help to a lone observer whose hands and nose were freezing while
guiding the telescope by eye and slewing it to the next target by
hand.

--
Steve Allen                    <sla at ucolick.org>              WGS-84 (GPS)
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