I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.

Which made me wonder, just how inaccurate could you make a timepiece? Without ever allowing it to stop completely.

eg.

• By making the balance wheel out of balance so it goes at different speeds depending on orientation
• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor
• A cog with a missing tooth, making the time jump forward
• A flywheel run directly off a power source, so it changes speed as the power source runs down
• An egg timer with ball bearings instead of sand, so by spinning it you can make time pass faster or slower
• A water clock where you can switch a stirrer on or off to change the rate at which time passes
• A quartz oscillator with wrongly set inhibition compensation, and a crystal cut that increases temperature dependence

But it seems to me that there is a limit to how much time measurement can be slowed down with some of these devices, and a limit on when during a 24 hour cycle it runs slowest.

How would you make a timepiece that runs inaccurately?

“I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.”

I like the concept.

Peak Warming Man said:

“I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.”

I like the concept.

What is the name of the book?

furious said:

Peak Warming Man said:

“I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.”

I like the concept.

What is the name of the book?

How long do you have?

PermeateFree said:

furious said:

Peak Warming Man said:

“I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.”

I like the concept.

What is the name of the book?

How long do you have?

If i spoke about a book i read a long time ago i might not remember the name, even after searching for it but if I were talking about a concept in a book I am currently reading i would refer to the name of the text…

Oval cogs
Different shaped elliptical cogs
Wonky springs
Loose areas
Tighter areas
Unbalanced wheels with lugs
Wonky axles

https://vorticwatches.com/blogs/the-vortic-blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-watches-the-savvy-collector

The following image is a fully disassembled Vortic wristwatch:

more info

https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/watch-parts-terms-functions-guide/

https://www.gearpatrol.com/watches/a467603/mechanical-watch-maintenance-guide/

https://bespokeunit.com/watches/watch-parts-guide/

You tube videos

How a Mechanical Watch Works

What’s inside your automatic watch

The Watch Complications Guide

The Watch Complications Guide

Complication – (horology)

14 Watch Complications Every Watch Collector Should Know

Vacheron Constantin creates world’s most complicated watch

Vacheron Constantin – REFERENCE 57260 – The Most Complicated Watch Ever Made

Wikipedia – List of complications Reference 57260

Hands-On The Vacheron Constantin 57260, The Most Complicated Watch In The World (Exclusive Live Photos, Thoughts)

Have a look a John Harrison’s chronometer, and do the exact opposite.
Have a look at the tourbillon mechanism, and do the exact opposite.

Spiny Norman said:

Have a look a John Harrison’s chronometer, and do the exact opposite.
Have a look at the tourbillon mechanism, and do the exact opposite.

Read a book on him, it was his lifes work and he didn’t get the money till he was too old and buggered to enjoy it.

furious said:

Peak Warming Man said:

“I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.”

I like the concept.

What is the name of the book?

“A man of shadows” by Jeff Noon

A dystopia with supernatural overtones.

Things have gone badly wrong even before the plot starts. With not just circadian rhythm problems, near impossibility of synchronising times, mental crashes, etc.

Will follow up links by Tau.Neutrino, Spiny Norman etc.

mollwollfumble said:

furious said:

Peak Warming Man said:

“I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.”

I like the concept.

What is the name of the book?

“A man of shadows” by Jeff Noon

A dystopia with supernatural overtones.

Things have gone badly wrong even before the plot starts. With not just circadian rhythm problems, near impossibility of synchronising times, mental crashes, etc.

Will follow up links by Tau.Neutrino, Spiny Norman etc.

I think cicadas live underground for five to seven years.

Peak Warming Man said:

mollwollfumble said:

furious said:

What is the name of the book?

“A man of shadows” by Jeff Noon

A dystopia with supernatural overtones.

Things have gone badly wrong even before the plot starts. With not just circadian rhythm problems, near impossibility of synchronising times, mental crashes, etc.

Will follow up links by Tau.Neutrino, Spiny Norman etc.

I think cicadas live underground for five to seven years.

A prime number year at least.

chuckle

seems to be two main ideas in all that I see

perhaps first i’ll venture expanding on a mood sensitive clock, came to mind, adjusts what it indicates of the passage of time in some way to suit a person’s moods, which I think moods (mental states also) do anyway with reference to position of the sun in the sky (and more), related circadian rhythms, and subject other clocks man-made they are probably as much ignored as variously internalized of temporal controls contributing to behavioral influences, much of temporal controls are probably seeing what other people are doing, or ideas about what they do. Seems there are quite a few aspects to chrono-conforming influences, of social expectations, and other aspects of environment (non-human), variously having an effect or influence over or on the milieu interior, and homeostasis broadly

by temporal controls I mean those things from which the sense of what you ought be doing is derived, internalized, particularly from your social environment and culture. Like a child learns to be at school at a suitable time before 9:00am, ready to start lessons, and the lesson learned properly has them turn up for work on time when older, or for a doctors appointment, all contributing to the orderliness of the world, expectations, predictability

I think mood-sensitive man-made clocks would ultimately lend to amplifying temporal controls, not relaxing them so people could better adjust. Just the shift for daylight saving probably has a net effect of amplifying temporal controls, conformity that way, just unsettling enough you’re glad it only happens twice a year

subject inaccurate clocks, depends what your intention or objective is

you could do it to mess with someone’s head, undermine some core aspects of what they get their reality from. I bet it’s been done in a basement somewhere, along with some unfriendly questioning

just a clock going backwards is worrying enough, saw that once, or if you’ve ever left the house and it’s been adjusted to daylight saving and you get in your car, need to be somewhere at a particular time, you look at the vehicle clock which hasn’t been adjusted while negotiating traffic, and for a moment you’re like what’s going on, did someone slip me some acid

Tau.Neutrino said:

https://vorticwatches.com/blogs/the-vortic-blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-watches-the-savvy-collector

The following image is a fully disassembled Vortic wristwatch:

Heh. I know this is completely OT, but the image reminded me of this – The toy box:

mollwollfumble said:

I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.

Which made me wonder, just how inaccurate could you make a timepiece? Without ever allowing it to stop completely.

eg.

• By making the balance wheel out of balance so it goes at different speeds depending on orientation
• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor
• A cog with a missing tooth, making the time jump forward
• A flywheel run directly off a power source, so it changes speed as the power source runs down
• An egg timer with ball bearings instead of sand, so by spinning it you can make time pass faster or slower
• A water clock where you can switch a stirrer on or off to change the rate at which time passes
• A quartz oscillator with wrongly set inhibition compensation, and a crystal cut that increases temperature dependence

But it seems to me that there is a limit to how much time measurement can be slowed down with some of these devices, and a limit on when during a 24 hour cycle it runs slowest.

How would you make a timepiece that runs inaccurately?

Isn’t this related to the difficulty of generating a random signal?

Tau.Neutrino said:

Oval cogs
Different shaped elliptical cogs
Wonky springs
Loose areas
Tighter areas
Unbalanced wheels with lugs
Wonky axles

Good points. You could get a really wonky timekeeping with those.

Spiny Norman said:

Have a look a John Harrison’s chronometer, and do the exact opposite.
Have a look at the tourbillon mechanism, and do the exact opposite.

> tourbillon mechanism

I hadn’t heard of this, checking up on wiki.

In a tourbillon the escapement and balance wheel are mounted in a rotating cage, in order to negate the effects of gravity when the timepiece is stuck in a certain position. By continuously rotating the entire balance wheel/escapement assembly at a slow rate (typically about one revolution per minute), the tourbillon averages out positional errors.

Gravity directly affects the most delicate parts of the escapement, namely the pallet fork, balance wheel and hairspring. Most important is the hairspring, which functions as the timing regulator for the escapement and is thus the part most sensitive to exterior effects, such as magnetism, shocks, temperature, as well as inner effects such as pinning positions, terminal curve, and heavy points on the balance wheel.

The biggest obstacle to regulating a watch, even today, is getting a constant impulse from the escapement regardless of its spatial orientation. The change in rate between horizontal and vertical is much greater than rate changes between different vertical positions.

> John Harrison’s chronometer

The invention of the bimetallic strip is generally credited to John Harrison, an eighteenth-century clockmaker who made it for his third marine chronometer (H3) of 1759 to compensate for temperature-induced changes in the balance spring.

A lot of plastics have a high coefficient of thermal expansion, more than ten times that of steel. So one way to make a wonky mechanical watch would be to make key parts out of plastic. Among the metals, we can discard mercury, tellurium and lithium as unsuitable and go straight to magnesium alloys for high thermal expansion.

Interestingly, natural quartz has a relatively high coefficient of thermal expansion, so quartz crystal watches could be made to be strongly affected by temperature.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Oval cogs
Different shaped elliptical cogs
Wonky springs
Loose areas
Tighter areas
Unbalanced wheels with lugs
Wonky axles

Good points. You could get a really wonky timekeeping with those.

Spiny Norman said:

Have a look a John Harrison’s chronometer, and do the exact opposite.
Have a look at the tourbillon mechanism, and do the exact opposite.

> tourbillon mechanism

I hadn’t heard of this, checking up on wiki.

In a tourbillon the escapement and balance wheel are mounted in a rotating cage, in order to negate the effects of gravity when the timepiece is stuck in a certain position. By continuously rotating the entire balance wheel/escapement assembly at a slow rate (typically about one revolution per minute), the tourbillon averages out positional errors.

Gravity directly affects the most delicate parts of the escapement, namely the pallet fork, balance wheel and hairspring. Most important is the hairspring, which functions as the timing regulator for the escapement and is thus the part most sensitive to exterior effects, such as magnetism, shocks, temperature, as well as inner effects such as pinning positions, terminal curve, and heavy points on the balance wheel.

The biggest obstacle to regulating a watch, even today, is getting a constant impulse from the escapement regardless of its spatial orientation. The change in rate between horizontal and vertical is much greater than rate changes between different vertical positions.

> John Harrison’s chronometer

The invention of the bimetallic strip is generally credited to John Harrison, an eighteenth-century clockmaker who made it for his third marine chronometer (H3) of 1759 to compensate for temperature-induced changes in the balance spring.

A lot of plastics have a high coefficient of thermal expansion, more than ten times that of steel. So one way to make a wonky mechanical watch would be to make key parts out of plastic. Among the metals, we can discard mercury, tellurium and lithium as unsuitable and go straight to magnesium alloys for high thermal expansion.

Interestingly, natural quartz has a relatively high coefficient of thermal expansion, so quartz crystal watches could be made to be strongly affected by temperature.

This thread has a lot that I would have to deal with in minutae. It wwill take some tiime, because though everyone has applied their science to this thread, they are none of them watchmakers. Not sure if I’ll bother elaborating on every attempt at comment.

I’d start with the last comment here on quartz crystal and thermal expansion. Try putting your quartz watch on the dashboard of your car parked in the full sun, ie: facing north. Leave it there and check accuracy changes between thee parameters of hottest and coldest. See if it still maintains accuracy of + – 2s/month?

Plastic? I went looking for the earliest plastic component mechanical watch I could remember, from 1973 by Tissot and here is a layperson’s view of it.
Yes I used to service these watches back in the day. http://members.iinet.net.au/~fotoplot/tissot/tissot.html

Yes it was John Harrison, a carpenter, whom did discover the bimetallic strip and apply it to his H3 chronograph. He also was first to apply temperature compensation to a balance wheel in 1753, using a bimetallic ‘compensation curb’ on the spring, in the first successful marine chronometers, H4 and H5. These achieved an accuracy of a fraction of a second per day but the compensation curb was not further used because of its complexity.

A simpler solution was devised around 1765 by Pierre Le Roy, and improved by John Arnold, and Thomas Earnshaw: the Earnshaw or compensating balance wheel. The key was to make the balance wheel change size with temperature. If the balance could be made to shrink in diameter as it got warmer, the smaller moment of inertia would compensate for the weakening of the balance spring, keeping the period of oscillation the same. Accomplished by fusing an inner ring of steel and an outer ring of brass as the wheel itself.

Positional error in mechanical watches needs to be compensated for and watchmakers have grappled with this forever but so many adjustments have been made that one would have to start drilling holes in the balance wheel or file bits off it.

Making pivots tighter? This will only stop the watch. An example here is that if the same tolerances in a clock were given to the moving parts of your average car engine then it probably wouldn’t drive the car 100 metres before having catastrophic failure. Conversly if the same tolerances in your car engine were applied to your average clock, it could not make a tick let alone a tock.

As for the plastics. Probably the quickest way to bugger the plastic watches would be to attempt a Salvador Dali reproduction by doing the dashboard test on a hot day like today which will hit 43 sometime today. Even though tthe techs behind designing materials have come a long way inspired by the likes of Harrison and Breguet, including the various compositions of plastics, I’d still reckon that temperatures of above 60˚C may well deform the wheels of a plastic watch inside a steel case.

mollwollfumble said:

I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.

Which made me wonder, just how inaccurate could you make a timepiece? Without ever allowing it to stop completely.

eg.

• By making the balance wheel out of balance so it goes at different speeds depending on orientation
• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor
• A cog with a missing tooth, making the time jump forward
• A flywheel run directly off a power source, so it changes speed as the power source runs down
• An egg timer with ball bearings instead of sand, so by spinning it you can make time pass faster or slower
• A water clock where you can switch a stirrer on or off to change the rate at which time passes
• A quartz oscillator with wrongly set inhibition compensation, and a crystal cut that increases temperature dependence

But it seems to me that there is a limit to how much time measurement can be slowed down with some of these devices, and a limit on when during a 24 hour cycle it runs slowest.

How would you make a timepiece that runs inaccurately?

It is surprising how little it takes to stop a watch or clock.

The first way to make it inaccurate without touching anything is to not wind it up. The second would be to not get the watch serviced and expect it to be accurate forever.

To fiddle with a watch? well simply poke something in there and bend something, like the sweep seconds hand or the hairspring. Doesn’t need to be much at all to change things. If the hands aren’t set accurately, the heat exchange will raise or lower the end of the sweep hand and it may touch against the glass. A good mechanical watch or synchronous electric clock will drag it around against the glass and slow the clock down. This will change by day and night and will be barely noticeable in most instances. It can go on to leave a permanent mark on the inner side of the glass. Takes a lot less to stop a quartz watch and this would be one way. The sweep hand of a quartz watch will not drag against a watch glass for long.

roughbarked said:

mollwollfumble said:

I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.

Which made me wonder, just how inaccurate could you make a timepiece? Without ever allowing it to stop completely.

eg.

• By making the balance wheel out of balance so it goes at different speeds depending on orientation
• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor
• A cog with a missing tooth, making the time jump forward
• A flywheel run directly off a power source, so it changes speed as the power source runs down
• An egg timer with ball bearings instead of sand, so by spinning it you can make time pass faster or slower
• A water clock where you can switch a stirrer on or off to change the rate at which time passes
• A quartz oscillator with wrongly set inhibition compensation, and a crystal cut that increases temperature dependence

But it seems to me that there is a limit to how much time measurement can be slowed down with some of these devices, and a limit on when during a 24 hour cycle it runs slowest.

How would you make a timepiece that runs inaccurately?

It is surprising how little it takes to stop a watch or clock.

The first way to make it inaccurate without touching anything is to not wind it up. The second would be to not get the watch serviced and expect it to be accurate forever.

To fiddle with a watch? well simply poke something in there and bend something, like the sweep seconds hand or the hairspring. Doesn’t need to be much at all to change things. If the hands aren’t set accurately, the heat exchange will raise or lower the end of the sweep hand and it may touch against the glass. A good mechanical watch or synchronous electric clock will drag it around against the glass and slow the clock down. This will change by day and night and will be barely noticeable in most instances. It can go on to leave a permanent mark on the inner side of the glass. Takes a lot less to stop a quartz watch and this would be one way. The sweep hand of a quartz watch will not drag against a watch glass for long.

Walking in and out of a coolroom all day in hot weather will not make noticeable changes to the watch you are wearing effected immediately after each in or out. However, the watch may easily draw in moisture and this will after a short time, affect the way the watch functions in many ways. Yes dust and water are the two biggest enemies of watch accuracy and function. In the case of quartz watches, electromagnetic fields and stron magnets can disrupt their function and indeed kill circuits. A leaky battery will also affect accuracy up to the point where it kills all conductivity in the circuit.
Back to bent hairspriings. These are calibrated during manufacture and any slight changes to flat round and concentric, will totally screw up accuracy. Swapping hairsprings from two watches of the same calibre can also do this as each hairspring is calibrated to the balance it is on and even the high tech watch manufacturers cannot guarauntee that this exchange will work perfectly.

roughbarked said:

roughbarked said:

mollwollfumble said:

I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.

Which made me wonder, just how inaccurate could you make a timepiece? Without ever allowing it to stop completely.

eg.

• By making the balance wheel out of balance so it goes at different speeds depending on orientation
• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor
• A cog with a missing tooth, making the time jump forward
• A flywheel run directly off a power source, so it changes speed as the power source runs down
• An egg timer with ball bearings instead of sand, so by spinning it you can make time pass faster or slower
• A water clock where you can switch a stirrer on or off to change the rate at which time passes
• A quartz oscillator with wrongly set inhibition compensation, and a crystal cut that increases temperature dependence

But it seems to me that there is a limit to how much time measurement can be slowed down with some of these devices, and a limit on when during a 24 hour cycle it runs slowest.

How would you make a timepiece that runs inaccurately?

It is surprising how little it takes to stop a watch or clock.

The first way to make it inaccurate without touching anything is to not wind it up. The second would be to not get the watch serviced and expect it to be accurate forever.

To fiddle with a watch? well simply poke something in there and bend something, like the sweep seconds hand or the hairspring. Doesn’t need to be much at all to change things. If the hands aren’t set accurately, the heat exchange will raise or lower the end of the sweep hand and it may touch against the glass. A good mechanical watch or synchronous electric clock will drag it around against the glass and slow the clock down. This will change by day and night and will be barely noticeable in most instances. It can go on to leave a permanent mark on the inner side of the glass. Takes a lot less to stop a quartz watch and this would be one way. The sweep hand of a quartz watch will not drag against a watch glass for long.

Walking in and out of a coolroom all day in hot weather will not make noticeable changes to the watch you are wearing effected immediately after each in or out. However, the watch may easily draw in moisture and this will after a short time, affect the way the watch functions in many ways. Yes dust and water are the two biggest enemies of watch accuracy and function. In the case of quartz watches, electromagnetic fields and stron magnets can disrupt their function and indeed kill circuits. A leaky battery will also affect accuracy up to the point where it kills all conductivity in the circuit.
Back to bent hairspriings. These are calibrated during manufacture and any slight changes to flat round and concentric, will totally screw up accuracy. Swapping hairsprings from two watches of the same calibre can also do this as each hairspring is calibrated to the balance it is on and even the high tech watch manufacturers cannot guarauntee that this exchange will work perfectly.

Take long East West flights. Relativity changes time.

roughbarked said:

roughbarked said:

mollwollfumble said:

I’m reading a sci-fi book in which watchmakers vie to produce the most inaccurate timepieces that they can. Not just faster and slower, but slowing down and speeding up during the day. (This is underground, the sky is not visible so you can’t rely on the motion of the Sun or Moon for a timescale). The ostensible reason for this competition is that it gives you more time to do the things you want, and allows you to make time fly when you’re not having fun.

Which made me wonder, just how inaccurate could you make a timepiece? Without ever allowing it to stop completely.

eg.

• By making the balance wheel out of balance so it goes at different speeds depending on orientation
• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor
• A cog with a missing tooth, making the time jump forward
• A flywheel run directly off a power source, so it changes speed as the power source runs down
• An egg timer with ball bearings instead of sand, so by spinning it you can make time pass faster or slower
• A water clock where you can switch a stirrer on or off to change the rate at which time passes
• A quartz oscillator with wrongly set inhibition compensation, and a crystal cut that increases temperature dependence

But it seems to me that there is a limit to how much time measurement can be slowed down with some of these devices, and a limit on when during a 24 hour cycle it runs slowest.

How would you make a timepiece that runs inaccurately?

It is surprising how little it takes to stop a watch or clock.

The first way to make it inaccurate without touching anything is to not wind it up. The second would be to not get the watch serviced and expect it to be accurate forever.

To fiddle with a watch? well simply poke something in there and bend something, like the sweep seconds hand or the hairspring. Doesn’t need to be much at all to change things. If the hands aren’t set accurately, the heat exchange will raise or lower the end of the sweep hand and it may touch against the glass. A good mechanical watch or synchronous electric clock will drag it around against the glass and slow the clock down. This will change by day and night and will be barely noticeable in most instances. It can go on to leave a permanent mark on the inner side of the glass. Takes a lot less to stop a quartz watch and this would be one way. The sweep hand of a quartz watch will not drag against a watch glass for long.

Walking in and out of a coolroom all day in hot weather will not make noticeable changes to the watch you are wearing effected immediately after each in or out. However, the watch may easily draw in moisture and this will after a short time, affect the way the watch functions in many ways. Yes dust and water are the two biggest enemies of watch accuracy and function. In the case of quartz watches, electromagnetic fields and stron magnets can disrupt their function and indeed kill circuits. A leaky battery will also affect accuracy up to the point where it kills all conductivity in the circuit.
Back to bent hairsprings. These are calibrated during manufacture and any slight changes to flat round and concentric, will totally screw up accuracy. Swapping hairsprings from two watches of the same calibre can also do this as each hairspring is calibrated to the balance it is on and even the high tech watch manufacturers cannot guarantee that this exchange will work perfectly.

Giving the balance staff pivots too much endshake or very very slightly changing one end of the pivots, will alter the positional error quite drastically. A drop of oil on the hairspring will make a day into a week. Same if the hairspring is magnetized. The watch will run so fast that a week will happen in a day.

Tamb said:

roughbarked said:

roughbarked said:

It is surprising how little it takes to stop a watch or clock.

The first way to make it inaccurate without touching anything is to not wind it up. The second would be to not get the watch serviced and expect it to be accurate forever.

To fiddle with a watch? well simply poke something in there and bend something, like the sweep seconds hand or the hairspring. Doesn’t need to be much at all to change things. If the hands aren’t set accurately, the heat exchange will raise or lower the end of the sweep hand and it may touch against the glass. A good mechanical watch or synchronous electric clock will drag it around against the glass and slow the clock down. This will change by day and night and will be barely noticeable in most instances. It can go on to leave a permanent mark on the inner side of the glass. Takes a lot less to stop a quartz watch and this would be one way. The sweep hand of a quartz watch will not drag against a watch glass for long.

Walking in and out of a coolroom all day in hot weather will not make noticeable changes to the watch you are wearing effected immediately after each in or out. However, the watch may easily draw in moisture and this will after a short time, affect the way the watch functions in many ways. Yes dust and water are the two biggest enemies of watch accuracy and function. In the case of quartz watches, electromagnetic fields and stron magnets can disrupt their function and indeed kill circuits. A leaky battery will also affect accuracy up to the point where it kills all conductivity in the circuit.
Back to bent hairspriings. These are calibrated during manufacture and any slight changes to flat round and concentric, will totally screw up accuracy. Swapping hairsprings from two watches of the same calibre can also do this as each hairspring is calibrated to the balance it is on and even the high tech watch manufacturers cannot guarauntee that this exchange will work perfectly.

Take long East West flights. Relativity changes time.

:)

roughy fixed my anniversary clock remotely

all I said was; “the dammed kids upstairs bounce down the stairs on their heels!” D-8<

and he walked me through prying it open and describing where to stick in a folded
bit of cardboard to keep the vibration from stopping the clock everyday @ 3PM

s’pin working ummm… “Like Clockwork” …ever since! <-:

use a random number generator, that has set limits so it wont make the time vary wildly. add this number to the frequency generated by the quartz crystal to make the time interval vary.

Ogmog said:

roughy fixed my anniversary clock remotely

all I said was; “the dammed kids upstairs bounce down the stairs on their heels!” D-8<

and he walked me through prying it open and describing where to stick in a folded
bit of cardboard to keep the vibration from stopping the clock everyday @ 3PM

s’pin working ummm… “Like Clockwork” …ever since! <-:

Yes. In a quartz clock, all that is required to cause problems is a loose battery terminal.
There was a long thread here on batteries changing size. Not that this is entirely relevant here but tight battery contacts are essential.

You could just use a second, larger balance/pendulum/whatever that steals energy from the clock movement when swinging one way, and replaces it on the return. That way your timepiece will be cyclically oscillating between too fast and too slow.

Dark Orange said:

You could just use a second, larger balance/pendulum/whatever that steals energy from the clock movement when swinging one way, and replaces it on the return. That way your timepiece will be cyclically oscillating between too fast and too slow.

Yes. Swap any part from another same watch of similar age and due to whatever differences there may be due to usage, this will affect accuracy.
Shorten or lengthen the pendulum rod. Add to or remove weight from the balance wheel.

mollwollfumble said:

• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor

This thing is 1010mm long and all brass.

of dial clock or watch, make the drives interfere with each other, there are various ways, but you make the drives for hours, minutes and seconds change or interfere, so the minute hand may start to drive the hour hand, that sort of thing

which raises the philosophical question, when is a clock no longer a clock

I run into these sorts of questions all the time out the farm, it could be a hole in a fence, and I ask when is a fence no longer a fence, or it could be a leak in a water pipe and ask when is a pipe no longer a pipe

transition said:

of dial clock or watch, make the drives interfere with each other, there are various ways, but you make the drives for hours, minutes and seconds change or interfere, so the minute hand may start to drive the hour hand, that sort of thing

which raises the philosophical question, when is a clock no longer a clock

I run into these sorts of questions all the time out the farm, it could be a hole in a fence, and I ask when is a fence no longer a fence, or it could be a leak in a water pipe and ask when is a pipe no longer a pipe

Well you can’t take offence without also taking the gates.

roughbarked said:

mollwollfumble said:

• By making a clock pendulum out of a material with a huge thermal expansion factor

This thing is 1010mm long and all brass.

uprighted

transition said:

of dial clock or watch, make the drives interfere with each other, there are various ways, but you make the drives for hours, minutes and seconds change or interfere, so the minute hand may start to drive the hour hand, that sort of thing

which raises the philosophical question, when is a clock no longer a clock

I run into these sorts of questions all the time out the farm, it could be a hole in a fence, and I ask when is a fence no longer a fence, or it could be a leak in a water pipe and ask when is a pipe no longer a pipe

Does a chainwire fence with a hole in it have fewer holes than one without?

Dark Orange said:

transition said:

of dial clock or watch, make the drives interfere with each other, there are various ways, but you make the drives for hours, minutes and seconds change or interfere, so the minute hand may start to drive the hour hand, that sort of thing

which raises the philosophical question, when is a clock no longer a clock

I run into these sorts of questions all the time out the farm, it could be a hole in a fence, and I ask when is a fence no longer a fence, or it could be a leak in a water pipe and ask when is a pipe no longer a pipe

Does a chainwire fence with a hole in it have fewer holes than one without?

Yes.

Dark Orange said:

transition said:

of dial clock or watch, make the drives interfere with each other, there are various ways, but you make the drives for hours, minutes and seconds change or interfere, so the minute hand may start to drive the hour hand, that sort of thing

which raises the philosophical question, when is a clock no longer a clock

I run into these sorts of questions all the time out the farm, it could be a hole in a fence, and I ask when is a fence no longer a fence, or it could be a leak in a water pipe and ask when is a pipe no longer a pipe

Does a chainwire fence with a hole in it have fewer holes than one without?

Fewer.

Dark Orange said:

transition said:

of dial clock or watch, make the drives interfere with each other, there are various ways, but you make the drives for hours, minutes and seconds change or interfere, so the minute hand may start to drive the hour hand, that sort of thing

which raises the philosophical question, when is a clock no longer a clock

I run into these sorts of questions all the time out the farm, it could be a hole in a fence, and I ask when is a fence no longer a fence, or it could be a leak in a water pipe and ask when is a pipe no longer a pipe

Does a chainwire fence with a hole in it have fewer holes than one without?

yes

You could also change the way the watch keeps time by changing the power supply.

Fusee watches were designed to maintain power supply.
This from 1832.

i’m reading about atomic clocks, wondering what’s involved in calibrating them etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V9HsnoGWJM

transition said:

i’m reading about atomic clocks, wondering what’s involved in calibrating them etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock

Anything that cools the rooom and raises the frequency of electronic transmission will increase the accuracy. So the two opposites could also reduce the accuracy.