I've been thinking about what would realistically still work after the magical "All of a sudden electricity no longer flows"/Energy Damper scenario postulated by Revolution. And one thing that does come to mind as being a problem for me personally is timekeeping.
I'm a trained deep-ocean navigator. Accurate determination of time is crucial to navigation. Every ship I sailed in had at least two, and often three, ship's chronometers. Toward the end of my time at sea, most often that was two World War II vintage wind-up chronometers and one electronic quartz chronometer accurate to about a second a year. Curiously, I never talked to a watch officer who ever used the quartz chronometer; to a man, we all trusted the old Seth Thomas, ex-US Navy mechanical chronometers that might have chronometer errors of a second a day or a half-second a day, which error we recorded in a little book and incorporated into our calculations, even when the total error was up into minutes. (If chronometer error got too great, like six or eight minutes off, you just let it run down, reset the hands to the correct time according to the universal time signal out of Greenwich, England or WWVH in Colorado and at the correct second restarted the chronometer; but you wouldn't trust it again until you had verified what its chronometer error now was, which would take about a week of observations.) But that isn't my point.
I wear nothing but quartz watches for a simple reason. While I adore mechanical watches, the cratsmanship and the precision inherent in them, they don't like me. If I wear a mechanical watch, within six weeks it starts to be erratic, going off by two or three minutes even if the watchmaker has guaranteed it to be accurate to a second a day. If I wear it for six months, it will lock up and refuse to run at all.
Case in point: in 1977 I bought a gold cased mechanical pocket watch, 24 jewel, anti-shock, water-resistant, all the goodies, because I did not care to wear a wristwatch that might get caught on something aboard ship and get me killed. I wore it on my next voyage, and halfway through the trip it locked up tight. I took it back to the shop in Boston where I had bought it, a shop that specialized in watches and chronometers, showed him the guarantee and asked him to fix it. He took it apart, found that grain dust had somehow gotten inside the case, and assumed that was the cause. He cleaned and lubed it and gave it back. Four months, it locked up again. I took it back, and I told him about my theory that some people generate an electrical or magnetic field or something that futzes up mechanical watches. He pooh-poohed my theory, but he took it apart and tested some of the parts, which he found HAD become magnetized. Not a large field, but enough to work on the gears connected to them and bugger up the works. He degaussed the watch, reassembled it, tested it, and gave it back to me. I went to sea with it, and four months later it locked up again. Took it back; he disassembled it, found more parts were magnetized, degaussed, reassembled and tested it again, and gave it back to me. He also mentioned he had gone to a watchmakers' convention, and had advanced my theory. Many of the other wachmakers had anecdotes about customers whose watches refused to keep time for them, mostly wristwatches. Put them on a shelf in the shop and they kept time; put them on the owner's wrists and in anywhere from a matter of weeks to a matter of days they would either become erratic; or as with mine, lock up and refuse to run at all.
He ended up selling me a nice quartz wristwatch, and advised me not to wear the pocket watch for more than a day at a time if at all. he could not explain why the watch kept locking up, but he could not deny the evidence.
Her Imperial Majesty's BFF has the same problem, only worse. A mechanical watch will lock up on her in a matter of days. She has never been able to keep a mechanical watch, be it a cheap Timex or a Rolex, running for more than about three weeks without it locking up. Her solution is the same as mine: use a quartz watch.
So: in the Revolution senario, what will folks like us do for timepieces? If electricity above the cellular level will not flow, quartz watches won't run. If mechanical watches lock up, what do we do? Carry sundials? It does not seem to affect clocks/chronometers that aren't carried around, just watches in close, constant proximity to the human body.
I have a Citizen Ecodrive and 2 Casio G-shocks. All 3 of them use solar energy to charge a capacitor, which powers the watch. I am not sure if they use IC chips internally or not...I've not taken them apart, so I don't know if they would survive an EMP.
But if I could get 60Hz to my Hammond, I could entertain y'all... All it is is spinning baklite wheels to generate the frequencies and vacuum tubes, capacitors, resistors and wire-wound coils to amplify the audio.
I have a Breitling navitimer mechanical watch which I love. After several year it started losing significant time so I took it to an authorized Breitling service center in Hong Kong for repair and tune up. They did an OUTSTANDING job--the watch may lose or gain a few seconds a day but on average will keep time for several weeks or more within a minute (on a mechanical movement). You do need to wear it or wind it or have it on a winder because keeping the spring under constant tension is important.
I figure it is as good as anything else in most situations--and will likely still be ticking even in the event of global thermonuclear war (and it LOOKS GOOD and CHICKS DIG BIG WATCHES !).
There are many variables which affect the innerworkings of ANY watch which ALL affect its timekeeping ability (temperature being a big one; acceleration--including gravity, magnetic fields, etc.). It doesn`t matter if it is mechanical or quartz (which in concept really aren`t that different--a quartz crystal is affected by pressure, temperature, acceleration, etc. as is a balance wheel--although maybe not as much. The mechanical guts of a watch are just a mechanical computer which is replaced by an electronic counter, computer, and display in the case of a digital watch).
I wouldn`t get too wrapped up over it--and just get something that works for you. If it makes you feel better our time is constantly changing--the earth is slowing down as is much of the universe (this is why the global warming bs is so silly--we are such a small part of this thing). The only thing about time is you never seem to have enough and it speeds when we would halt it. At the end of the day it is all we get on this planet so use it wisely
__________________
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit -- John Galt
I wouldn`t get too wrapped up over it--and just get something that works for you. If it makes you feel better our time is constantly changing--the earth is slowing down as is much of the universe (this is why the global warming bs is so silly--we are such a small part of this thing). The only thing about time is you never seem to have enough and it speeds when we would halt it. At the end of the day it is all we get on this planet so use it wisely
entropy always increases.
__________________
cosmoline is the infection vector for Mosinitis
My wife has had nothing but trouble with electric watches her entire life.
She finally gave up on watches as her cell phone has the time.
If all electricity goes out the need for food and water will make knowing the accurate time a minor thought. For what it is worth you might want to set up a sundial and arrange it for your latitude.
1Likes
