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Calendar types in watches

(arslan.io)
179 points farslan | 1 comments | 29 Apr 24 17:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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joshlemer ◴[30 Apr 24 18:12 UTC] No.40214187[source]▶
Anyone know about any mechanical wall clocks, grandfather clocks, or mantle clocks (? I mean ones that stand on their own) which show the date? It seems that this is a really commonly sought after feature of wrist watches but for some reason hard to find or non existent in mechanical non-wrist clocks.
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quartesixte ◴[30 Apr 24 18:47 UTC] No.40214668[source]▶
Unfortunately they're not really a thing. Some grandfather/grandmother clocks came with moon phases, but innovation never made it further.

IMO mostly has to do with the fact that mechanical clocks didn't see much innovation over the past century. The most talented watch makers have gone on to watches and people largely stopped buying Grandfather clocks.

Not to mention, other obvious problems of weight, material costs, and the increased size requiring more power to turn all those gears.

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joshlemer ◴[30 Apr 24 19:08 UTC] No.40214945[source]▶
Dang that's a shame. One would think though, if the mechanical design is already done for wristwatches, it should be trivial to port that design over to full-sized clocks, literally just scale the mechanism up!
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1. al_borland ◴[30 Apr 24 22:27 UTC] No.40217188[source]▶
I think at this stage of the game, none of these things are made for utility, they are made to flex watchmaking skill. Building something big isn’t as impressive and building something small. Unless you’re talking about the air clocks of Paris. Those are still rather impressive, because of the scale [0].

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gol_p2aWrJg