[LEAPSECS] Adjusting Big Ben video (was Re: Of stepping motors and leap seconds)

[Tony Finch]

Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> How do they keep big Ben in sync these days? Eg, who decides it is running
> fast or slow?

I don't know about how they do it, but Frank King has written about how he
keeps the University clock in Cambridge reasonably in sync:

http://www.scy.org.uk/chimes.htm

The Big Ben chimes were copied from Cambridge. There's another clock in
Trinity College which has a similar mechanism to the Big Ben clock, and a
much more sophisticated monitoring system than the University clock -

http://trin-hosts.trin.cam.ac.uk/clock/main.php

The second page of this has pictures of the ajustment weights and how they
are placed on the pendulum.

http://trin-hosts.trin.cam.ac.uk/clock/img/TCSS_Newton_2010.pdf

The setups for adding coins to the pendulums of Big Ben and the University
clock are not quite as beautifully engineered as this!

Tony.
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