Time measurement in astronomical observations
Observatory of La Côte d’Azur
Production: OCA. Scriptwriting: Cyrille Baudouin, OCA. Director: Cyrille Baudouin, Sébastien Vabois (De Nay Live Event). 3D modelling: Sébastien Vabois (De Nay Live Event).
Craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics inscribed on the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
At the crossroads of science, art and technology, the skills related to the craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics are used to create watchmaking objects designed to measure and indicate time (watches, pendulum clocks, clocks and chronometers), art automata and mechanical androids, sculptures and animated paintings, music boxes and songbirds. These technical and artistic objects feature a mechanical device that generates movements or emits sounds. Though generally hidden, the mechanisms can also be visible, which contributes to the aesthetics and poetic dimension of the objects.
The Jura Arc is an area in which craftsmanship remains particularly dynamic thanks to the presence of highly qualified craftspeople and companies that promote the skills and a full range of training options. Historically, entire families were involved in the practice, developing apprenticeship practices and professional and family alliances. Skills were initially learned in training schools. Nowadays, practitioners also share their know-how via online blogs, forums and tutorials and collaborative open source projects. As well as serving an economic function, the skills have also shaped the architecture, urban landscape and everyday social reality of the regions concerned. The practice conveys many values such as good workmanship, punctuality, perseverance, creativity, dexterity and patience, and the infinite quest for precision and the intangible aspect of time measurement give the practice a strong philosophical dimension.
SAVVYZΛΛR // “When Does Time Start?”
with K.Metwaly, K.Krugman, A.Ndakoze and L.Balatbat // 26.06.2020
There was this moment: moment again. I left it there, on a warm night moving with my heartbeat. Going in cycles, as the travel of the earth around the soon. I meant moon. Did I? When did I sense that again, am I sensing it, or do you: the cosmos walking me?
WHEN DOES TIME START? A conversation between the SAVVYZAAR Team (Kamila Metwaly, Kelly Krugman, Arlette-Louise Ndakoze) & Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock
Watchmaking symphony
The meridian sighting marks of the Neuchâtel Observatory
Article on the website of Swisstopo
To determine Swiss time the Neuchâtel Observatory observed the passage of the stars above the meridian using a telescope. To make sure that the telescope was correctly adjusted, it was required to scan the north-south axis and identify two marks serving as reference points. These marks still exist today. The southern mark in Portalban has a direct link to swisstopo since it was integrated into the national survey network.
What is a meridian sighting mark?
It is a stone construction which had to be visible with the meridian telescope. In order to enable the Neuchâtel Observatory to cover the north-south axis and thus determine the time at which the stars pass over the meridian, two telescopes had to be built. One to the north and the other to the south. If the telescope did not detect these marks, they had to be readjusted.
In 1959, the lack of precision of the meridian telescope and the arrival of atomic clocks sounded the death knell for the use of sighting marks. However, they are now part of the heritage of the Neuchâtel Observatory and swisstopo.
Where are these marks?
The Observatory of Neuchâtel had three sighting marks built. The closest was on the Mail hill, 80 meters from the Observatory. It no longer exists today. The northern sighting mark was erected in Chaumont, 3 kilometres from the Observatory. The third was built in Portalban, on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel, 9.5 kilometres south of the Observatory. Like the mark in Chaumont, the Portalban sighting mark still exists
The southern sighting mark in Portalban
The first mark in Portalban was rather crude. Indeed, in 1861, the Observatory had a black diamond painted on a rock on a white background. The second version of the mark was also created in 1861 and consisted of an obelisk 3.10 meters high. A white diamond surrounded by black was also painted on the stone structure.
The link between the Portalban sighting mark and swisstopo
In 1927, the Portalban sighting mark was integrated as a first-order fixed triangulation point and as a third-order triangulation point by the Federal Topographic Service (swisstopo). This fixed point was therefore measured precisely, and its coordinates are well known. As a result, the point is protected by federal law and cannot be dismantled. In 1886, a levelling pin was sealed on the sighting mark. swisstopo is responsible for its inspection and renovation. And its condition is checked every 12 years.
Portalban, in the line of sight of the Neuchâtel Observatory
The association “EspaceTemps”, which wants to safeguard the scientific heritage of the former Neuchâtel Observatory, inaugurated the renovated Portalban calibration sight this afternoon. For the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, it is a 1st category marker of the national triangulation, for drawing up the map of the country. But let’s go back to 1861, when this calibration sight had another function…
Report on the television channel CanalAlpha (in French)
Introduction Central European Time in Switzerland
In the 19th century, every town in Switzerland had a different time!
Article in L’Illustré, “Le changement d’heure, quelle histoire!”, October 2018
There was a time when there was, for example, a difference of 1 minute and 57 seconds between Geneva and Lausanne, 3 minutes and 8 seconds with Neuchâtel, 4 minutes and 1 second with Fribourg and 4 minutes and 50 seconds with Sion. As Jakob Messerli, Director of the Museum of History in Berne, writes in an article on time measurement, “In the mid-19th century, mechanical clocks were still set throughout the country according to sundials. The creation of the federal state in 1848 did not lead to any unification of time measurement systems and each Swiss locality continued to have its own time. With a difference of 18 minutes between the extreme points of the territory, from east (Val Müstair) to west (canton of Geneva)”. It was the installation of the telegraph network in 1852 that sounded the death knell for the coexistence of different times in the territory. The acceleration of communications required a unified system. In 1853, the Federal Council adopted the Berne mean time for all postal and telegraphic traffic. From 1860 onwards, this time was set daily by the Neuchâtel Observatory. In the second half of the 19th century, the railways also aligned themselves with Berne time, which became the national standard and Berne, the time capital of the country, in the second half of the 19th century. Yes, we were living on Berne time without always suspecting it. And for those who were indifferent to the clock stories, we can still hold on to the timeless Latin saying: “If you want to put a price on days, don’t count the hours!”.
The Dangerous Game of Precision Timekeeping
From sundials and time balls to the six pips and smartphones, David Rooney charts the human quest to be bang on the dot of time.
Article on Vanity Fair by David Rooney
The bestselling author Marie Corelli, inspiration for the eccentric Lucia in E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels, refused to change her clocks after the UK’s Summer Time Act was passed in 1916. She described people who went along with the practice of advancing time in summer months as “the sheep of humanity”. Instead, she believed in the sun and sailors. In Mapp and Lucia’s town of Tilling, real time was God’s time, and not to be trifled with.
But Corelli was wrong to hold that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was any truer than its hour-offset sibling. It is often claimed that the development of railways across the U.K. from the 1830s onwards led to the standardisation of time—to the use of GMT across the whole country, rather than the myriad local times kept by sundials on churches and public buildings in each town or village. It is true that railways ran better with one single time on their timetables. But local time clung on longer than we might assume. It was not until 1880 that a law was passed defining GMT as the U.K.’s standard, and in the end it was more about the Victorian temperance movement demanding liquor licensing with time restrictions than it ever was about railway timetables.
….
Chronophotography
The chronophotography is a set of stop-action photographs of rapidly moving things in order to study and measure the motion. Pioneers of this technique included artist Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904) and scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904).
Thomas Eakins, Motion Studies, Philadelphia, 1884
The Library Company of Philadelphia
Memento mori
Memento mori means “remember that you are going to die” and is a formula of medieval Christianity. Expressing the vanity of earthly life, it refers to the “art of dying”, or Ars moriendi. It induces an ethic of detachment and asceticism. It is close to another Latin locution: “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“Thus passes the glory of the world”).
Its origin dates back to Greco-Roman antiquity, when a slave stood beside a victorious general during his triumph (parade) to remind him of his mortal condition. The phrase “Hominem te esse” (“You too are only a man”) was also used.
This vision of the human condition gave rise to many artistic representations.
Allegory of vanity, 1634,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
