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Nature Clock
Clock that divides the day into hours/minutes/seconds based on actual hours of daylight | |
A clock that stretches each second/minute/hour in the summer, and shrinks them in the winter, to coincide with actual dawn and dusk. The clock would assign 6am to sunrise year around, and 6pm to sunset. In the winter, when days are shorter, the clocks units are shortened in the day and lengthened at
night. Vice-versa for summer. Lunch would always be halfway through the daytime hours. Midnight would always be exactly halfway between dusk and dawn. You'd always go to work at the same "natural" time (2 hours after sunrise, for example) and go home the same way. It would make our enslavement to the clock match up with what our bodies did before there ever were clocks.
Ancient Egypt
http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Second#History
[coprocephalous, Aug 04 2009]
Keith's Astrolabe Applet
http://www.autodida...tro/info/astro.html
Online working astrolabe includes 'unequal hour' function [pocmloc, Aug 04 2009]
[link]
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I realize this would wreak havoc with all kinds of things from TV schedules to factory shift work (including demands for more pay for summer "hours"), but I envision this as more for the free spirit type who sets his own hours and cares little for making anyone else happy. I've toyed with code for this on my palm pilot, but never got it perfected. |
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One reason is so that I could dedicate a certain portion of my day to a particular task. If I want to work on a project for 3 "adjusted" hours per day. I realize I could use a regular clock and figure out what that works out to, but this would be simple. I also suspect that following nature's cycle for day and night may turn out to have other physical benefits for people. |
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Baked by the Ancient Egyptians. [linky] |
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[] I think that this might get a little crazy, as your "latitude" is just as important as the date. |
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//If I want to work on a project for 3 "adjusted" hours per day// This doesn't make a whole lotta sense to me. Why should a "3 hour" project take longer in the summer just because there's sunlight a higher % of the time? |
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I just figured that if the idea appealed to me, it would be likely that at least a few others would like it also. I'm certain that there will be those who don't see the point. Vive la différence! |
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The point, as I see it, is that this is a thing of beauty. Welldone [youngpatriot]. |
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Those long summer hours north of the Arctic circle. Sheesh, the day shift would last for weeks. |
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This is called 'unequal hours', and astrolabes usually incorporate a rotary slide rule scale thingy to convert between equal and unequal hours, and also astrolabe plates have curving lines for the unequal hours so the rete itself acts as a direct scale... [link] |
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There are astrolabe clocks (which rotate the rete in real time) but I don't recall seeing one which had the unequal hours gradations on. |
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Once on the Antiques Roadshow many years ago I saw a 19th century Japanese mechanical mantel clock (possibly made in Europe for export?). The hands rotated as usual (poss. only an hour hand?) (24 hours for one rotation) but the numbers were fixed onto little metal sliders with grub screws to fix them against the rim... apparently the local clockmaker would come round once a week to wind the mechanism and also to adjust the positions of the hour numerals to coincide with the local unequal-hour time |
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