[HN Gopher] The modern clock; a study of time keeping mechanism ...
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       The modern clock; a study of time keeping mechanism (1905)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2021-01-28 07:49 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (archive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
        
       | RicoElectrico wrote:
       | Kind of weird that in the chapter about mercurial pendulum they
       | switch to metric system.
        
       | mhh__ wrote:
       | I love the typesetting on old books like this.
       | 
       | I bought a truckload of old Radar and microwave engineering
       | books, and they're remarkably useful even today (the fundamentals
       | of information theory haven't change since 195-whatever for
       | example). Obviously computers were out of reach, so lots of
       | integration tricks and awful rules of thumb in places.
        
         | RicoElectrico wrote:
         | I wonder why there are no tables in places there could be one -
         | like in the list of metal expansion coefficients or
         | gravitational acceleration by location.
        
           | mhh__ wrote:
           | People had books for that stuff back then, so I imagine it
           | wasn't worth the considerable effort typesetting them.
           | 
           | I also have a book of data from way back, and since its still
           | fairly accurate, it's still alarmingly easier just to look
           | something up than Google it i.e. there doesn't seem to be one
           | repository for (say) resistivity coefficients in one place
           | alongside magnetic moments.
        
         | MaxLeiter wrote:
         | Huge long shot, but do you happened to have a copy of
         | Radargrammatry by Daniel Levine?
        
           | mhh__ wrote:
           | By the looks of googling, all of mine are about 30 years
           | older on average. They're mostly tripe, i.e. books that
           | aren't classics for a reason, but sometimes it's nice to see
           | engineering as done in the past (if I'm ever a billionaire
           | I'm going to buy a jet fighter just to get access to the
           | manuals and take it to bits)
           | 
           | My earliest maths book was an algebra problems book from the
           | late 1800s but I gave it away to my maths teacher when I left
           | for university as recompense for not turning up and generally
           | being a shit student.
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | Just found a book on raytracing from 1951!
        
       | ffhhj wrote:
       | Also very interesting this NAVY manual on mechanical computers:
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/mechanical-computer-technical-ma...
       | 
       | There is an old book on building analog computers at home, but I
       | can't remember the title.
        
       | fanf2 wrote:
       | There's lots of good information about the Trinity College clock
       | at http://trin-hosts.trin.cam.ac.uk/clock/main.php
       | 
       | The current clock dates from 1910 (a few years after this book)
       | and it has a similar design to Big Ben's clock in the Palace of
       | Westminster.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | While watchmaking has enjoyed great reneissance lately, I find it
       | curious that full-sized clockmaking still seems pretty dead
       | field, at least comparatively. There is no popular reimagings of
       | grandfather clocks or other household timepieces like there are
       | watches.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-28 23:01 UTC)