Another WT on YouTube

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While searching for "Pulsynetic" I found another YouTube video of a larger WT. Possibly a C40B.

It follows the same practice as the smaller C40A but is scaled up to drive and control the hands of larger dials. The top of the cast main frame is arched with vertical members on each side. Making it an attractive and balanced design. The Hipp toggle damper now rises from the armature pivot casting. The contact assembly has pressed steady bars from the post war period. While the finish is the earlier black with lacquered brasswork. The time setting dial is present and much larger than those of the C40As. The drive electromagnets look like bare, enamelled copper wire. The video poster suggests it is running on 20VDC. I thought I had seen a table somewhere showing 30V for the B model. It may be a false memory.




It is a great shame that the video background is so busy. But much worse, the camera is being blinded by the glare from the windows behind the WT. One couldn't ask for more difficult filming conditions! The video claims to be 720p HD but sadly it doesn't look it for the reasons given above.

This is not petty criticism for its own sake. Nor some peculiar artistic snobbery on my part. I simply wish to be able to examine this very rare movement in much greater detail. To make valid comparisons with my own movement and all the other material available online and in print.

A published video is not just moving pictures. It is a unique historical record of a piece of technology, in action, on a certain date. Making a visual recording bears a certain amount of responsibility to future study. And yes, I do know that my own efforts are hardly inspiring. Nor do they set the pinnacle of creative video making. That said, they do show all the details reasonably sharply given my limited skills, lack of practice and rather humble equipment. So that a later researcher can identify exactly how the item works and the methods used.

This is not some wishful thinking on my part. Committing a video or photograph to the internet will probably provide an indelible record far into the future. When the item has been lost to the ravages of time, the video or photograph will be the only remaining record of a unique device. One can never tell how such information will be used in the distant future. Students of the future may trawl their own internet like historians and archaeologists search papers, church records and libraries today.

The irony is that future historians may well be far more interested in the background activities and clothing than the WT. Perhaps they will have the skills to 3D print any object which ever existed. Though they may need our help to do so. By our providing enough detail for their advanced technology to maximise our efforts.

Today, we can automatically improve our digital photographs. This, only a few short years after its invention. Tomorrow's technology may be able to rebuild literally anything from scratch. All at relatively low cost.

Perhaps fully realistic moving holograms will be more desirable and collect less dust? A future horologist may easily have a fully lifelike C40B WT clonking away in his study. One which he can walk through as he crosses the room. He may even smile to himself as he walks around it. Fully aware that it does not exist in reality. Happy to pretend that it does. As some private joke.

Few can predict the future. The absence of obvious time travellers could suggest it is truly impossible. Or that there are no time travellers willing to reveal themselves. It may be simply because man ceases to exist. Only a year, or three, into our own future. Some unseen catastrophe involving a crashing asteroid, global thermonuclear war or an incurable pandemic may cut short human progress away from his ignorance, superstition, greed and savagery.

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