Time

I've always been a fan of Pink Floyd's "Time", and the subject of time too. I used to have an old wind up watch as a kid, and could tell the time from an early age. There's something about time that is comforting, it's the same for everyone right? The only difference is of course some clocks are more accurate than others. Mine was always 100%, i checked it with the radio.

So it's no surprise that i was curious about this story about a 100 year old watch found in a 400 year old tomb, that was believed to have been sealed. Ok, so someone is wrong, but look at this:

It appears to be a ring, but has a watch built in. It has siezed, but was fully functional. Beautiful. Apparently it is even marked "Swiss" and should not be older tan about 100 years. But The archeologists are certain that the tomb had not been entered since its sealing 400 years ago, when "Switzerland" did not even exist.

Of course, no discussion on ancient time keeping will be complete without the Antikythera-Mechanism.

That is of course a computer simulation, this is what it looked out out the sea:

The beauty is that once it worked. Flawlessly. From wiki:

The mechanism has three main dials, one on the front, and two on the back. The front dial has two concentric scales. The outer ring is marked off with the days of the 365-day Egyptian calendar, or the Sothic year, based on the Sothic cycle. Inside this, there is a second dial marked with the Greek signs of the Zodiac and divided into degrees. The calendar dial can be moved to compensate for the effect of the extra quarter day in the solar year (there are 365.2422 days per year) by turning the scale backwards one day every four years. Note that the Julian calendar, the first calendar of the region to contain leap years, was not introduced until about 46 BC, up to a century after the device was said to have been built.

If you appreciate mechanical items, you cannot but stand in awe of these wondrful toys.