Au contraire - Accutrons are passe'. My partner collects them and repairs them. (Still pretty cool, though.) He also does pocket watches, which has led me to wonder about taking a pocket watch case and installing the electronics from my OnHand PC in it, just for the sake of contrast. I'm also considering the Timex "Internet Messenger" watches; right now they've got a deal where you get a year's free service with unlimited text messages, e-mails, etc. sent to the watch. On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Loboyko Steve wrote:

"Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" wrote: Yeah. I use analog myself. Perhaps I'm being a Luddite, but aesthetically I find the motion of a second hand (and especially a sweep-second hand) to be a much more elegant and universal model to represent the flow of time than physically-arbitrary changes in the light and dark patterns of seven-segement displays. That said, I came real damn close to bidding on an old Commodore LED watch. :) -- Ross

I remember this watch, it was rated for 90G's of shock resistance or something... This goes back to 1978 or 1979 I think, but I clearly remember the unique case style! Kent Borg wrote:

Does anyone have a copy of the NetTrek game for MacOS? (And I don't mean the Netrek Unix game.) I used to play this all the time on the Mac SEs in my highschool. Some of the old Mac archives have the game listed, but none of them actually have the archive file. -brian.

I always liked playing Marathon over a LAN between a bunch of Centris 610's. Wouldn't mind finding a usable copy either since my disks seem to be corrupted. That and Risk (both MacOS and DOS versions) were my favorite games. Jeff -- Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.cchaven.com http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

On 01-Aug-2002 Kent Borg wrote: [...] *Ring* http://www.ledwatches.net/articles/Synchronar%202100%20Solar%20LED%20Watch.… bye Thilo

That baffled me for a minute until looking at it. I had forgotten that slide rules could be circular. Sure beats for size the large German-made one inherited It was too big to fit properly in my zipper binder. I eventually bought a cheaper one that was only 10-12" long. I was aghast when much later my son was allowed to bring an electronic calculator with him into exams. IIRC slide rules were strictly verbotten in my time. Lawrence lgwalker(a)mts.net bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com

How about one of these: http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/watch.html --tom

At 05:31 03/08/2002, R. D. Davis wrote: Nooo! *Real* watches go tick-tock and wind themselves :) I finally gave up on quartz watches 2 years ago, and have had an automatic ever since. Superb it is, none of that tedious morning winding, it makes all the right noises, and it cost a mere twenty quid from Argos. All I have to remember is that April, June & November *don't* have 31 days... -- Cheers, Ade. Be where it's at, B-Racing! http://b-racing.com

At 07:38 03/08/2002, Huw Davies wrote: I rarely forget February, since it's so much shorter... I got fed up of batteries running out and/or the watch dying, hence the auto. -- Cheers, Ade. Be where it's at, B-Racing! http://b-racing.com

At 16:15 03/08/2002, you wrote: Damn! So I did. Must remember old saying....Must remember old saying....Must remember old saying.... "30 days has September, April June and November." I forget exactly how the rest of it goes, but I know it mentions "except February alone". -- Cheers, Ade. Be where it's at, B-Racing! http://b-racing.com

At 11:37 AM 3/08/2002 -0700, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote: Not where I live - February is usually "blessed" with a number of days over 35C. OTOH, July is colder, say 15C, but it seems to be getting warmer during the winter (if my heating costs are anything to go by). Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au | "If God had wanted soccer played in the | air, the sky would be painted green"

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/03/1627246&mode=flat&tid=1… has an article on the Bulova Accutron, the first successful transistorized watch. --John

At 07:43 PM 3/08/2002 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: An equivalent (and easier method) is as follows: 1) Make a fist, knuckles up. 2) Starting with the nearest knuckle, counting both knuckles and hollows in between, incant the months. January, March, May, July will fall on knuckles and therefore have 31 days, the months that fall in the gaps don't. Now start from the _front_ again, giving August, October and December. Easy when you know how. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au | "If God had wanted soccer played in the | air, the sky would be painted green"

Yep -- I got taught the knuckle calendar in third grade and I never forgot it. People think it's funny when they see me counting months on my hand, though. :-) -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- He is rising from affluence to poverty. -- Mark Twain ----------------------

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002 15:49:39 -0700 (PDT), Sellam Ismail wrote: You may be half right... ;-) -Bill Richman (bill_r(a)inetnebr.com) Web Page: http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r Home of the COSMAC Elf Microcomputer Simulator, Fun with Molten Metal, Orphaned Robots, and Technological Oddities.

At 18:46 04/08/2002, Tony Duell wrote: Break in the middle of the back of your hand? Did you drop the soldering iron on it or something? ;) -- Cheers, Ade. Be where it's at, B-Racing! http://b-racing.com

Quothe Merle K. Peirce, from writings of Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 11:31:33AM -0400: Doing so isn't easy. To get started, here's one source for such a watch: The Vermont Country Store - they have an intereting printed catalogue with many hard to find items in it, and a quick search just resulted in discovering that they also have a web site: www.vermontcountrystore.com Ok, what you need then is a sundial! Heck, even just looking at the relative position of the sun in the sky is good enough for me. Why bother and complicate life by worrying about the exact hour? :-) Good idea - they're nice watches. -- Copyright (C) 2002 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

Tony Duell wrote: 'Garden Rubbish' Where you expecting something StoneHenge size? StoneHenge is on topic as it was used to calculate lunar eclipes many years ago. Here is one book title that gives a lot of information but is not a sundial plan book. Sundials Their Construction and use R. Newton Mayhall Margaret W. Mayhall ISBN 0-486-41146-X Hey I just am getting useto writing 2002. :)

Hi, ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) said: If you do a search on the web you'll find a lot of sites, some very technical, about sundials. I know because my brother is thinking of making one and he got a lot of info that way. -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb(a)dial.pipex.com The future was never like this!

Neat. I'd like one, too, but I noticed that two people came up with the idea (written up in Scientific American and some other place), and three others took the idea and patented it. That sounds like an abuse of the patent system. -- Eric Dittman dittman(a)dittman.net Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/

On the subject of patents... You don't need an original idea to get a patent. All you need is an original application, or more technically a unique set of claims for an idea. If you file a patent on an invention, but make an error of omission and leave out some key claim for your device, its perfectly leagal for someone else to see your patent, recognise the missing claims and then file an improvement patent. In reality, a good fraction of all patents appear to be patents on prior art. If you want to better understand the U.S. patent system, don't think like an engineer. There is a method to the apparent maddness, and it works. Sellam Ismail wrote:

I have a Skagen watch that is just that. It has a minute hand, and an hour hand. No alarms or anything. Almost no marks on the face, for that matter, and it looks all sleek and stylish ;) Merle K. Peirce said: - Dan Wright (dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) (http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) -] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- ``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

On Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 12:31:21AM -0400, R. D. Davis wrote: With that I just have to bring up the subject of: Clocks. I have a big analogue clock that says "Western Union", "U.S. Naval Observatory Time", "Self Winding Clock Company, New York". Inside is a pendulum movement and a coil spring that periodically gets wound by a pair of batteries that drive a crude "motor" made of two electromagnets that rock a lever back and fourth, ratcheting up the spring. It makes a cool buzzing sound, as you might expect. There are brackets for a pair of big dry cells in there, but I have a pair of alkaline D-cells in there instead. There is also a red light bulb showing through the face. I lights up when the clock gets a synchronization signal (pulling the second hand to 12). Western Union used to sell time service. I first heard about these clocks years ago reading the old telecom usenet group, and then someone piped up that he had a bunch to sell. I sent my $100 to the total stranger and he sent me my clock. I recently spent more than that getting it repaired (the "shovel" that turns the pendulum's motion into rotary movement had worn down and needed to be built up again). What I have not done is get around making the "U.S. Naval Observatory Time" part true again. I plan to hook it up to my Linux box (which gets time that is traceable to the Naval Observatory), and watch the light glow now and then. I like the idea of having this old technology linked through a computer, the internet, GPS time references, etc. I like the mix. Kinda like my wanting a teletype hooked up to the same Linux box. -kb, the Kent who wears a combination analogue and digital watch on weekdays, but a self-winding (actually "self-charging") analogue display, quartz watch on weekends.

On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 12:21:12AM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: I am afraid I know little about clocks. I know a fair amount about time, but that is different. I think so. The pendulum is adjustable and there is a notice saying how many seconds each turn is worth. Also, the synchronization pulse can pull the seconds forward of back, I'd say it is happy to adjust within +/- 10 seconds. (Honestly, I can't remember now whether the minute hand also zeros on the pulse--I think so.) After I had it repaired I was ajusting it and for a while it was running *perfectly*. Or at least better than a quartz watch. It was as though I was sending sync pulses. It ran that way for well over a week. Interesting. Now you are getting beyond my knowledge of the terminology. Sounds like some of each, but I wonder whether that makes sense. "pawl and ratchet wheel" sounds like a good description of what is there; the wheel has kinda a sawtooth to it and this shovel-looking thing pulls back, drops down to the next tooth, swings the other way shoving the wheel a seconds-worth, then swings back again for another go. The edge of this shovel (or possibly "prawl") is what got worn down. It wasn't shoving the wheel quite far enough. So what propels the pendulum? It occures to me that I don't know. I know that the electricity is there to wind a spring. I'll have to see if I can see inside. (I think I once removed the hands and face to see all this, but I am reluctant to keep doing that and will look from the side with a bright light.) It looked to me like there was metal missing from where it once was and again needed to be. Buying a new part seems unlikely, making a new one seems difficult, and repairing the old one seems a bit magical too. Is it really that easy? Seeing another e-mail that there are a bunch of these in the 'tty warehouse, I think you might want to visit NJ soon and get one. -kb, the Kent who was thinking yesterday that he would also like one of those digital clocks with the flipping metal numbers. P.S. I have also thought it would be neat make a 120 V AC supply with a precise time base (referenced back to the Naval Observatory I suppose) for driving a nice big synchronous motor clock with a beautiful, smooth, sweep second hand that would be right on the button. Are synchronous motors willing to run without damage on the stepped sin wave put out by cheap 12v-to-120v inverters? One of those might make a good starting point.

On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 07:30:31PM +0100, Tony Duell was confused by my previous description. Um, never trust an eye witness. Last night I shined a bright light into the guts of my clock, and I was wildly wrong in my previous posting. It *is* an escapement movement. The prawl I was remembering was a completely different clock. Sorry for the confusion. Another (smaller!) correction: the self-winding "motor" is a single action device. A solenoid pulls a lever in, and a spring pulls it back. (I think I had earlier said it was two solenoids pulling alternately.) Damn. Maybe someone will collect the whole stack and sell and ship them to others. -kb

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Doc Shipley wrote: What kind of fiendish plotting is going on here with talk of escapment movements and even, dare I say, prawls? Peter Wallace

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Well then...I guess I have about 80 of these things. One of the many goodies from the warehouse... Two 35s left today, two remain. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org