 |
Read puzzling facts of time at the Calendar Reform page. |
(the one that's correct does NOT appear if you use the Microsoft IE browser! Try Netscape next time J) |
|
Read puzzling facts of time at the Calendar Reform page. |
(the one that's correct does NOT appear if you use the Microsoft IE browser! Try Netscape next time J) |
| Does
Anybody Really Know What Time it is?
If you want to know the exact time, you should go to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Their Time Service Department makes sure you wake up and go to bed on time. Didn't you always want to know about leap seconds? (How many have you leaped reading this?) "Atomic time," they write, uses as a "unit of duration the Système International (SI) second defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of cesium 133." How about taking a trip into a Time Machine? |
To really get chic, put on your
Wearable
Sundial so that you can know the time using the sun. Eléanore
d'Aquitaine gave one of these to her hubby Henri II so he would know when
the sun's shadow said it was time for one of their love trysts.
(Annual dues to the North American Sundial Society [NASS] is only 25 bucks. Check them out for "the study, development, history, and preservation of sundials and the art of dialing.") The Clepsydra Water Clock, developed somewhere around 1400 B.C., was perfected by the Chinese and Egyptians to replace the sundial and was used in Europe until the pendulum clock arrived in 1656. Su Song's water-powered clock tower was the world's first astronomical clock. This groovy measurement of Ancient China used 36 tilting scoops mounted on a large drive wheel. WATER IS TIME. |
