I’ve tried putting this in a thread previously started about clocks and watches but none of the titles fitted.
History seems to be the main focus here so I’ve started a new thread, even though I’ve started a long way down the line of the historic time line.
This bloke is a bit time consuming but it is kind of a bit buddhistic view as well. However, I believe he has put time into perspective in the history of Japanese clockmaking and the view of time itself, apart from the place in history that Japan makes its way into the modern world.

History of Japanese Meiji Clocks – Lecture – updated version

Japanology

My favourite historical clocks are never (to my limited knowledge) listed in histories of clocks at all.

Starting circa 2500 BC, giant sundials called obelisks were set up in town squares throughout Egypt.
The shadow of the point of the tip gave an extremely accurate measure of time.

Early obelisks from about 2300 BC were small by more recent standards (but large compared with wrist watches) at about 3 metres tall.

The oldest extant obelisk sundial is from Heliopolis (near Cairo) and was built about 1900 BC.

The obelisk at Karnak was built about 1490 BC and is 24 metres tall.

The tallest extant obelisk sundial is 32 metres tall.

mollwollfumble said:

My favourite historical clocks are never (to my limited knowledge) listed in histories of clocks at all.

Starting circa 2500 BC, giant sundials called obelisks were set up in town squares throughout Egypt.
The shadow of the point of the tip gave an extremely accurate measure of time.

Early obelisks from about 2300 BC were small by more recent standards (but large compared with wrist watches) at about 3 metres tall.

The oldest extant obelisk sundial is from Heliopolis (near Cairo) and was built about 1900 BC.

The obelisk at Karnak was built about 1490 BC and is 24 metres tall.

The tallest extant obelisk sundial is 32 metres tall.

How else would you know about them?

mollwollfumble said:

My favourite historical clocks are never (to my limited knowledge) listed in histories of clocks at all.

Starting circa 2500 BC, giant sundials called obelisks were set up in town squares throughout Egypt.
The shadow of the point of the tip gave an extremely accurate measure of time.

Early obelisks from about 2300 BC were small by more recent standards (but large compared with wrist watches) at about 3 metres tall.

The oldest extant obelisk sundial is from Heliopolis (near Cairo) and was built about 1900 BC.

The obelisk at Karnak was built about 1490 BC and is 24 metres tall.

The tallest extant obelisk sundial is 32 metres tall.

2300BC is a long time ago, did they even have town squares back then, did they have towns?

mollwollfumble said:

My favourite historical clocks are never (to my limited knowledge) listed in histories of clocks at all.

Starting circa 2500 BC, giant sundials called obelisks were set up in town squares throughout Egypt.
The shadow of the point of the tip gave an extremely accurate measure of time.

Early obelisks from about 2300 BC were small by more recent standards (but large compared with wrist watches) at about 3 metres tall.

The oldest extant obelisk sundial is from Heliopolis (near Cairo) and was built about 1900 BC.

The obelisk at Karnak was built about 1490 BC and is 24 metres tall.

The tallest extant obelisk sundial is 32 metres tall.

roughbarked said:

Japanology

Ta roughbarked. Really enjoyed listening to this, and it told me a lot I didn’t know.

I hadn’t realised that the Japanese originally split daylight into equal intervals and nighttime into equal intervals.

Looks like the quartz watch came very close to never being invented at all – it took the rivalry between three countries to bring it to fruition.

And the accuracies in seconds per day came as a surprise to me as well, I’ve never heard such accurate measurements of timepiece accuracy before. etc.

Two quick questions.

1) How accurate is my fitbit? I don’t know if it’s even possible to answer that question. eg. is the time reset when it synchronises with the app, or with the internet, or neither?

2) The bedside electric clock that mrs m bought just a couple of months ago from KMart has an error of 3 minutes per day. Is it fixable?

mollwollfumble said:

mollwollfumble said:

My favourite historical clocks are never (to my limited knowledge) listed in histories of clocks at all.

Starting circa 2500 BC, giant sundials called obelisks were set up in town squares throughout Egypt.
The shadow of the point of the tip gave an extremely accurate measure of time.

Early obelisks from about 2300 BC were small by more recent standards (but large compared with wrist watches) at about 3 metres tall.

The oldest extant obelisk sundial is from Heliopolis (near Cairo) and was built about 1900 BC.

The obelisk at Karnak was built about 1490 BC and is 24 metres tall.

The tallest extant obelisk sundial is 32 metres tall.

roughbarked said:

Japanology

Ta roughbarked. Really enjoyed listening to this, and it told me a lot I didn’t know.

I hadn’t realised that the Japanese originally split daylight into equal intervals and nighttime into equal intervals.

Looks like the quartz watch came very close to never being invented at all – it took the rivalry between three countries to bring it to fruition.

And the accuracies in seconds per day came as a surprise to me as well, I’ve never heard such accurate measurements of timepiece accuracy before. etc.

Two quick questions.

1) How accurate is my fitbit? I don’t know if it’s even possible to answer that question. eg. is the time reset when it synchronises with the app, or with the internet, or neither?

2) The bedside electric clock that mrs m bought just a couple of months ago from KMart has an error of 3 minutes per day. Is it fixable?

The clock or the Mrs ?

mollwollfumble said:

mollwollfumble said:

My favourite historical clocks are never (to my limited knowledge) listed in histories of clocks at all.

Starting circa 2500 BC, giant sundials called obelisks were set up in town squares throughout Egypt.
The shadow of the point of the tip gave an extremely accurate measure of time.

Early obelisks from about 2300 BC were small by more recent standards (but large compared with wrist watches) at about 3 metres tall.

The oldest extant obelisk sundial is from Heliopolis (near Cairo) and was built about 1900 BC.

The obelisk at Karnak was built about 1490 BC and is 24 metres tall.

The tallest extant obelisk sundial is 32 metres tall.

roughbarked said:

Japanology

Ta roughbarked. Really enjoyed listening to this, and it told me a lot I didn’t know.

I hadn’t realised that the Japanese originally split daylight into equal intervals and nighttime into equal intervals.

Looks like the quartz watch came very close to never being invented at all – it took the rivalry between three countries to bring it to fruition.

And the accuracies in seconds per day came as a surprise to me as well, I’ve never heard such accurate measurements of timepiece accuracy before. etc.

Two quick questions.

1) How accurate is my fitbit? I don’t know if it’s even possible to answer that question. eg. is the time reset when it synchronises with the app, or with the internet, or neither?

2) The bedside electric clock that mrs m bought just a couple of months ago from KMart has an error of 3 minutes per day. Is it fixable?

Electric clock? you mean it gets plugged in to mains power?
It should be synchronous. It would only lose time when the power goes out.
\
Most devices that can connect are reset off atomic clocks.

A small issue with that video, They were talking about the Japanese watch industry and the majority of the watches shown working were actually Swiss watches.

Here are a few images of a Breguet minute repeater.

by Abraham-Louis Breguet in Paris in around 1780.

The minute repeater is easily one of the most elaborate complications in watchmaking. Only the most skilled and experienced watchmakers are able to master this complicated mechanism. It takes craftsmen several weeks to assemble the hundreds of components necessary for a single minute repeater.

A minute repeater is a mechanical watch complication that acoustically relays the time. Watches with this complication feature an independent chiming mechanism that strikes different tones for hours, quarter hours, and minutes with the help of two small hammers.

This blo\ke raves on a lot and is deeply patriotic as many Americans are. He claims that Hans Wilsdorf was a liar and he’s taken it upon himself to prove this.

the first waterproof watch’s-first-waterproof-watch%22-book

Doubtless it was vernacular at the time but they still don’t have a waterproof watch. They are all marked “water resistant” these days.

Perhaps in the future we will see a hydrophobic watch.

roughbarked said:

This blo\ke raves on a lot and is deeply patriotic as many Americans are. He claims that Hans Wilsdorf was a liar and he’s taken it upon himself to prove this.

the first waterproof watch’s-first-waterproof-watch%22-book

Doubtless it was vernacular at the time but they still don’t have a waterproof watch. They are all marked “water resistant” these days.

Perhaps in the future we will see a hydrophobic watch.

‘Water resistant’ is a safe term.

Like, tissue paper is water resistant. Not a whole lot water resistant, but it is.

And even submarines aren’t waterproof, if they go too deep.

roughbarked said:

This blo\ke raves on a lot and is deeply patriotic as many Americans are. He claims that Hans Wilsdorf was a liar and he’s taken it upon himself to prove this.

https://lrfantiquewatches.com/depollier-%22world’s-first-waterproof-watch%22-book

Doubtless it was vernacular at the time but they still don’t have a waterproof watch. They are all marked “water resistant” these days.

Perhaps in the future we will see a hydrophobic watch.

Bugger it. I’ve tried fixing that link. It just won’t work. the apostrophe in the link keeps buggering up the coding.

captain_spalding said:

And even submarines aren’t waterproof, if they go too deep.

Six months in a leaky boat.

From an article titled “The Seven Crafts of Patek Philippe”, where they referenced the Caliber 89 that contains a complication wheel that makes one complete rotation every 400 years. Attached photo.

It would be interesting if they were to estimate the number of years it would take, before the wheel required replacement due to wear.

Because it travels so slowly, it would likely not wear much at all. Presumably if the watch were to run for 400 years, then the watch itself would have many other parts that would wear before this.

They made three grades. This is #1

roughbarked said:

They made three grades. This is #1

More masonry imagery.

From Wiki:
The watch is thought to have been commissioned in 1783 by an unknown admirer of the French Queen, Marie Antoinette.

It took nineteen years to complete. Marie Antoinette did not live to see the watch, as it was completed 9 years after she was executed. Work stopped for around seven years (1789–1795) during the period of Breguet’s exile. It was finally finished in 1802. The “Marie Antoinette” remained in the possession of the Breguet company until it was sold to Sir Spencer Brunton in 1887, eventually finding its way into the collection of Breguet expert Sir David Lionel Salomons in the 1920s.

It was stolen from the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art on April 17, 1983 along with more than 100 other rare timepieces from Salomons’ collection. The theft was unsolved for 23 years until the police were tipped off by people who reported to have been shown pieces from the collection. It turned out that master-thief Na’aman Diller had committed the theft, hiding the watches in safes in the United States, Europe and Israel. After Diller’s death, his widow tried to sell the stolen watches and clocks in 2004. She was caught and given 5 years probation for accepting stolen goods. Of the 106 timepieces that were stolen, only 39 were recovered in 2007, including the Marie Antoinette. The watches were returned to the museum in Jerusalem. In 2013, the watch was valued at $30 million.

The watch is composed of 823 components, and was to contain every watch function known at that time, including the following:

Clock Celestial time State of winding Perpetual calendar Minute repeater Thermometer Chronograph Power reserve Pare-Chute (shock protection system, Breguet’s own invention) Chime Automatic winding Independent seconds hand

Even by the standards of the day it was an astronomically expensive piece. The most valuable materials (including gold, platinum, rubies and sapphires) were used with no limit placed on time or cost. The watch is encased in gold, with a clear face that shows the complicated movement of the gears inside. Breguet used sapphires in the mechanism to decrease friction.

Breguet company records indicate that the factory costs eventually came to the colossal sum of 30,000 francs. This is more than six times the cost of Breguet’s other major work, No. 92, which was sold to the Duc De Preslin for 4800 francs.

This chronograph minute repeater was made in the 1880’s. There are a number of images showing the complete dismantling of the hunddreds of parts.