Post by excoriator on Jan 7, 2021 0:24:05 GMT
Some years back I bought a 250 year old grandfather clock, with the idea of adding an electronic compensation system to the pendulum and phase-locking it to an off-air atomic standard. I got it all working and having done so removed it to tidy up the system which I never quite got round to. It's less fun when you've solved all the problems
Since then, it has developed certain eccentricities. It strikes the hours accurately apart from around tea time when it informs the house that four o'clock to seven o'clock is actually five o'clock to eight o'clock. Then the hour hand started showing the wrong hour, and bears little relationship to the real time. The minute hand works fine though.
It has been on my 'to-do' list to operate on the old gent and put it right, but I have held off doing so, because of the amazing accuracy with which it strikes the hour. The number of strikes is often wrong, but they occur as the pips sound on the radio. To the nearest second. Mrs E. assumed that the compensation system was in place, it's so accurate, but it isn't! When she remarked on how good my system was I had to open the clock to show her it wasn't there, as she assumed I was joking. I NEVER adjust it, because I don't need to. I just wind it up on Sunday mornings.
It sits in the hall which we don't usually heat, but there is a large radiator facing it, and the other day I turned it on to see if it would affect its accuracy. Not a bit of it. After about three days of warmth, it hadn't lost a second.
I get the feeling that it is telling me not to be so impertinent as to attempt to improve it's accuracy! I'm not superstitious, but something remarkable seems to be happening.
Since then, it has developed certain eccentricities. It strikes the hours accurately apart from around tea time when it informs the house that four o'clock to seven o'clock is actually five o'clock to eight o'clock. Then the hour hand started showing the wrong hour, and bears little relationship to the real time. The minute hand works fine though.
It has been on my 'to-do' list to operate on the old gent and put it right, but I have held off doing so, because of the amazing accuracy with which it strikes the hour. The number of strikes is often wrong, but they occur as the pips sound on the radio. To the nearest second. Mrs E. assumed that the compensation system was in place, it's so accurate, but it isn't! When she remarked on how good my system was I had to open the clock to show her it wasn't there, as she assumed I was joking. I NEVER adjust it, because I don't need to. I just wind it up on Sunday mornings.
It sits in the hall which we don't usually heat, but there is a large radiator facing it, and the other day I turned it on to see if it would affect its accuracy. Not a bit of it. After about three days of warmth, it hadn't lost a second.
I get the feeling that it is telling me not to be so impertinent as to attempt to improve it's accuracy! I'm not superstitious, but something remarkable seems to be happening.