[time-nuts] Regulating a pendulum clock

[Bob Holmstrom]

Food for thought.

I find it interesting that no one has suggested alternatives to  
improving the performance of a pendulum clock other than controlling  
it with a higher performance clock.  If the goal is a better clock why  
not attempt to understand the source of the errors and work on methods  
to control or compensate for them?  Teddy Hall has been taken to task  
for using a quartz controlled oscillator to measure the amplitude of a  
pendulum in the control loop of his Littlemore clock.

Tom Van Baak has developed techniques for analyzing the performance  
and hence potential error sources of pendulum clocks - perhaps he will  
share some of his work here.

Horological history is full of many attempts at solutions to the  
problem, but it would seem that the creativity of this group might  
generate some new ideas that are more in the spirit of better  
timekeeping than attaching the pendulum to a better oscillator.

How about a wireless controlled device attached to the pendulum that  
changes its position based on error sensor readings, not time errors,  
but instead, temperature, barometric pressure, gravity, etc. that  
would maintain a more constant pendulum period?

Bob Holmström
Editor
Horological Science Newsletter
www.hsn161.com