[HN Gopher] Oxfordshire clock still keeping village on time afte...
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Oxfordshire clock still keeping village on time after 500 years
Author : 1659447091
Score : 95 points
Date : 2025-05-29 03:32 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| smitty1e wrote:
| "You really need to take the upgrade. Enough centuries have
| passed."
|
| "Oh, all right."
|
| > A modification also saw the installation of a mechanised
| winding system, ending the requirement for somebody to climb the
| narrow, winding staircase each day to the clock room to do the
| job by hand.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| sounds like a wind-up
| 867-5309 wrote:
| the clock or the staircase?
| pm215 wrote:
| I couldn't find anything with better image quality, but youtube
| seems to have some 2014 footage of the clock in action (so pre
| restoration work): https://youtu.be/ix0IxTqgavE
| Oarch wrote:
| This has an almost hallucinatory quality
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Prepare your ship of Theseus arguments now, gentlefolk, for that
| mechanism does not look like a 16th century one to me.
|
| The frame, _perhaps_ , but the rest of it looks Victorian at the
| very oldest, more likely from the 1960s restoration, when people
| were not so much into conservation as they were into
| modernisation.
|
| I don't think this detracts from the picture of it as a very old
| clock, as it has almost continuously functioned as a clock since
| its inception - if anything, it makes for a nice palimpsest of
| horological technology, and speaks of a continuity of care that
| is markedly rare.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| "I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold
| Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite
| how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was
| first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn't
| weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground
| twice in this century. "So it isn't the original building?" I
| had asked my Japanese guide.
|
| "But yes, of course it is," he insisted, rather surprised at my
| question.
|
| "But it's burnt down?"
|
| "Yes."
|
| "Twice."
|
| "Many times."
|
| "And rebuilt."
|
| "Of course. It is an important and historic building."
|
| "With completely new materials."
|
| "But of course. It was burnt down."
|
| "So how can it be the same building?"
|
| "It is always the same building."
|
| I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly
| rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected
| premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its
| design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building.
| The intention of the original builders is what survives. The
| wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced
| when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original
| materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past,
| is to fail to see the living building itself."
|
| -- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
| _joel wrote:
| Reminds me of Trigger's broom.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM
| Epa095 wrote:
| What a beautiful quote!
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It's a great listen - the original broadcast is available
| on the BBC and elsewhere.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/sites/radio/aye_aye.s
| h...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The "multimedia" project accompanying it on CD-ROM is
| delightful, but it requires either Windows 3 or Classic
| MacOS, so it's difficult to run today:
|
| https://archive.org/details/Last_Chance_To_See_CDs
|
| (Edit: This version seems to be the Windows 3 version
| only.)
| jjmarr wrote:
| This is the whole point of the "banana taped to wall" art
| that everyone mocks.
|
| Part of the work is a certificate of authenticity and a
| detailed guide for taping a fresh banana to a wall (it must
| be exactly 1.6 meters above the ground). Because the banana
| rots, this gives you permission to recreate the banana taped
| to a wall as needed for display.
|
| It's brilliant because it makes you question what the
| "essence" of a work of art is. Literally anyone can tape a
| banana to a wall. But you don't have the artist's intent
| allowing you to do so.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I thought that was just for scale ?
| jjmarr wrote:
| Forgot to link the Wikipedia article:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork)
| detaro wrote:
| But it's also like much other installation art for decades.
| Art piece as instructions and a "license" is nothing new.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's not the atoms, it's the pattern of the atoms.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Very nice novel about one of the fires as well by Yukio
| Mishima.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Forsooth! "Palimpsest of Horological Technology" shall
| heretofore be the moniker by which I dub a rag-tag band of
| madrigal performers, and/or the Macguffin from _Indiana Jones
| and the Dial of Destiny_!
|
| Growing up in San Diego, we often visited Presidio Park, site
| of the San Diego Mission, or was it?
|
| It was only 17 years ago when I managed to untangle the
| relationship between the Mission de Alcala in the valley and
| the Presidio on the hill.
|
| I told my friend from Spain that we could go visit, and she
| exclaimed "a prison? why visit a prison?"
|
| And one or more buildings of the Presidio has been completely
| rebuilt, as replicas, as a museum and tourist attraction. And
| everyone told me the grass mounds outside were burial sites or
| something.
|
| But as a child I didn't get it; the building just looked like
| an old mission from the photographs and they had nice exhibits
| about what life was like tending crops and winepresses. Also,
| there is an observation point on the third floor, where you can
| see the Pacific Ocean and all of Mission Valley.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > Mission de Alcala in the valley
|
| A long time ago, and for a couple years, I lived next to the
| stadium there and regularly bought meat from the Iowa meat
| farms butcher -- I did not even know Mission de Alcala
| existed or the areas history until today! (thanks for the
| post) And I drove past it all the time. These days thats the
| kind of historical site I travel around to visit; some
| variation of the phrase youth is wasted on the young comes to
| mind.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Prepare your ship of Theseus arguments now_
|
| As soon as I saw the headline, I knew this HN cliche would be
| one of the first comments.
|
| Your body has replaced all of its cells several times already
| in your lifetime. Are you not the same person?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Living beings are patterns of energy and information that
| operate continuously - the matter is not the stuff - hence
| when you die, you die.
|
| With a clock - the matter arguably is the stuff, as you can
| stop and start it at will.
| lazide wrote:
| If you lose consciousness (sleep, or trauma) and then awake
| - are you the same person before and after? How can you
| know?
| praptak wrote:
| > Are you not the same person?
|
| If you want to prevent a philosophical debate, that's a very
| risky question to ask :)
| nosianu wrote:
| There is not much to discuss. It's not like the universe
| forces you to use one particular definition for some word.
| You can decide to use whichever you want for "same person",
| and somebody else may use another one. There is no higher
| power to make one of you more right. Human power helps (if
| you control the books and the lesson plans and the grading
| of tests, you kind of win).
| krisoft wrote:
| > Your body has replaced all of its cells several times
| already in your lifetime. Are you not the same person?
|
| That is the Ship of Theseus argument using other words.
| dekhn wrote:
| Not all the cells in the body are replaced in your lifespan.
| But yes, identity is not specific to the constituents of the
| original object if there is a continuum of changes.
| nosianu wrote:
| Okay... so I'm going to do some nitpicking on the non-
| essential fringes of the argument if that's okay?
|
| > _Your body has replaced all of its cells several times
| already in your lifetime_
|
| Not true. Cells like neurons, heart cells, skeletal muscle
| cells are permanent (with minor caveats).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_cell
| lukan wrote:
| Thank you! I always doubted that claim, but never looked
| into it.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> for that mechanism does not look like a 16th century one to
| me.
|
| What parts dont look 16th century?
|
| Many aspects look identical to this, albeit smaller, clock from
| the 16th century. Note the pin holding the frame together, an
| exact miniature of the town clock.
|
| https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co531/1...
|
| It certainly does not look like the mechanisms seen on the
| streets of a 16th century farming village, but even today the
| most high tech devices are generally out of public view.
| jaccola wrote:
| What is the Ship of Theseus?!
|
| Your argument on parts being replaced is interesting though...
| Reminds me of Triggers broom.
| qw wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
|
| > The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a
| paradox and a common thought experiment about whether an
| object is the same object after having all of its original
| components replaced over time, typically one after the other.
| rvz wrote:
| Maintained systems built to last as long as 500 years is what
| engineers should be aiming to build, especially striving for both
| quality and to be highly battle tested in hardware.
|
| This one didn't break 25 years ago with the Y2K bug and it won't
| break in 2038 either.
|
| A vibe-designed version of this however could not even last 4
| years (AI introduces leap year bug) or even 6 months (clock will
| break going back and forth adjusted for DST)
| pqtyw wrote:
| > This one didn't break 25 years ago with the Y2K bug and it
| won't break in 2038 either.
|
| Well yes but it had to be manually wound and adjusted by
| someone on a very regular basis to continue functioning.
|
| It's much more efficient than a human having to look at a
| sundial every 15 minutes and ring the bells manually but
| effectively the same thing, not an automated system.
|
| > clock will break going back and forth adjusted for DST)
|
| So you just fix it manually twice a year? Seems like a
| significant improvement : D
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| >Well yes but it had to be manually wound and adjusted by
| someone on a very regular basis to continue functioning.
|
| So does most software.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Yes, that was kind of my point.
| swayvil wrote:
| I like the scale of that machinery. Very manageable.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, it's interesting to think of a clock with no precision
| gears, but since there's no hands it opens up methods with less
| complications /s
| julian55 wrote:
| We have a similar faceless clock in our village although perhaps
| not as old.
|
| https://leigh-on-mendip.org.uk/church-clock
| alfanick wrote:
| I live in a small Swiss village. We have two churches, they ring
| their bells every hour (number of dong-sounds is equal to the
| hour). But, they're slightly out of phase, so you can hear two
| separate churches' bells.
|
| And one of the churches also rings their bells every 15 minutes
| (1-ring for each quarter). On top of this at 6:00am it rings a
| whole rhapsody of sounds for whole 5 minutes - "wake up people,
| time to go to work on a field!".
|
| Initially it may be annoying, eventually you just get used to it,
| in the end you actually learn to figure out the time from the
| bell sound and make use of it.
| cogogo wrote:
| I live in a neighborhood in Boston with a couple of big
| churches. The hourly bells are useful to teach the kids how to
| tell time. Especially when out and about. Thankfully none of
| the bells wake us up but I do appreciate them.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| pre-Renaissance the mechanical clock was a show of power for
| Christian civilization.. one of the many benefits, along with
| literacy and the written word in all its uses, of the Christian
| society versus others.. and versus others it was.. on the edges
| of the Christian world were raiding tribes, marching armies and
| slaving of all kinds, from the great Central Asia all the way
| into modern France, from the East, Vikings from the North and
| African continental peoples from the South. The Christian world
| sometimes came by the peace of the Savior, and also by the Sword,
| chain and taxes.
|
| Clocks are very impressive.. useful.. and now there is almost no
| escape from them? What was lost?
|
| This is a particularly impressive and useful clock. The benefits
| to the town are manifold. In these times, it might be worth
| examining their shadows, as well.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Clocks are very impressive.
|
| I mean, once you have a clock, anyone can tell time. I'm more
| impressed by those that can tell time by time of year and
| position of celestial objects. It's December and Orion is 20deg
| above horizon so it must be close to...
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| A secret is to use the great costco shopping cart relative to
| the north star.
| verisimi wrote:
| > Clocks are very impressive.. useful.. and now there is almost
| no escape from them? What was lost?
|
| What was lost is control of time for the individual. Time is
| such an externalised concept now, we can barely conceive of an
| internal, natural sense of time.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Somewhat related: I was impressed when I once visited Salisbury
| Cathedral, where there is a restored clock vom 1386 on display.
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Cathedral_clock
| layer8 wrote:
| "In terms of accuracy, it's pretty accurate."
|
| What more could you want?
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| It may be in Oxfordshire now, but only since 1974. For most of
| its life it was in Berkshire (until they decided to that the
| county should follow the M4 motorway, rather than the river
| Thames).
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