Now, see? This is high-test JJF $h!+ I used to haunt Hodinkee for and now happily read here.
Me, I'm a simple soul. Gimme a movement which takes 122 years before it loses the plot (no yawning gulf of eternity needed here, thank you very much!) and gives getting the terminator right a clever college try... and I'll happily pour a libation to help forget all about libration, and toss that darned Aspidistra right out the window.
I like to think that if I found this article with no context or byline I would still be able to guess it was a Jack Forster original. It will be a long time before an AI can beat you at this kind of writing. Thank you for putting this kind of content out in the world.
Can I ask a stupid question? If you have a moonphase accurate to say 122 years and it sits in a drawer unsold for an unknown amount of time, how do you know how to set it? Like is it the 5th day or the 256th day?
Not a stupid question at all. To set a moonphase watch, usually you use a corrector/pusher in the case band. You look up the correct phase of the Moon for the day you are setting the watch and adjust the moonphase display accordingly. "Accurate to 122 years" just means the display won't be off by a full day from where you set it for 122 years. Of course that's assuming you run the watch continuously for 122 years; in reality, the watch will probably be serviced at least several times over that period so the advantage in precision is a little more theoretical than anything else.
I have always loved moonphase watches going back to seeing them as a kid, I don't know why I have no real interest in the lunar calendar. I will be honest, when I first got my Cellini moonphase I went out and checked how it looked compared to the dial...a bit tricky since you see the entire moon all the time just relative to where it lands on the reference point. Maybe that is why I have never thought about why they don't look similar. What has bugged me is trying to figure out how to set the full moon to the exact time (according to google) it appears the most full like say March 7, 2023 at 6:42am CST....but I suppose if I really needed that I would just wear an apple watch ultra
I'd love to see someone take these points and create a real-world accurate moonphase clock similar in style to the Fountaine aux Oiseaux that ven cleef submitted for GPHG mechanical clock category this past year (because I am a reasonable man who would not ask someone to do all of this in a watch...just yet). It would make an absolutely stunning autometon style clock.
On a similar note, all this talk of moonphases reminds me of a great article last month in NOVA. An amateur scholar successfully deciphered these symbols next to animals in 18,000 year old cave paintings. The symbols represent the migration/mating/birth cycles of the animals they depict in lunar months. This would represent one of the first lunar recorded lunar calendars ever documented. Definitely worth a read, to go with the Moon theme (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cave-painting-calendar-earliest-writing/). The actual scientific journal article is fascinating, but the NOVA article covers all the fun parts well enough
Now, see? This is high-test JJF $h!+ I used to haunt Hodinkee for and now happily read here.
Me, I'm a simple soul. Gimme a movement which takes 122 years before it loses the plot (no yawning gulf of eternity needed here, thank you very much!) and gives getting the terminator right a clever college try... and I'll happily pour a libation to help forget all about libration, and toss that darned Aspidistra right out the window.
I like to think that if I found this article with no context or byline I would still be able to guess it was a Jack Forster original. It will be a long time before an AI can beat you at this kind of writing. Thank you for putting this kind of content out in the world.
Isn’t the problem trying to replicate a 3D image, what you see in the sky, in 2D on your wrist? Seems impossible to me?
Well, it can be a 3d representation too, as De Bethunes did.
Can I ask a stupid question? If you have a moonphase accurate to say 122 years and it sits in a drawer unsold for an unknown amount of time, how do you know how to set it? Like is it the 5th day or the 256th day?
Not a stupid question at all. To set a moonphase watch, usually you use a corrector/pusher in the case band. You look up the correct phase of the Moon for the day you are setting the watch and adjust the moonphase display accordingly. "Accurate to 122 years" just means the display won't be off by a full day from where you set it for 122 years. Of course that's assuming you run the watch continuously for 122 years; in reality, the watch will probably be serviced at least several times over that period so the advantage in precision is a little more theoretical than anything else.
I have always loved moonphase watches going back to seeing them as a kid, I don't know why I have no real interest in the lunar calendar. I will be honest, when I first got my Cellini moonphase I went out and checked how it looked compared to the dial...a bit tricky since you see the entire moon all the time just relative to where it lands on the reference point. Maybe that is why I have never thought about why they don't look similar. What has bugged me is trying to figure out how to set the full moon to the exact time (according to google) it appears the most full like say March 7, 2023 at 6:42am CST....but I suppose if I really needed that I would just wear an apple watch ultra
I'd love to see someone take these points and create a real-world accurate moonphase clock similar in style to the Fountaine aux Oiseaux that ven cleef submitted for GPHG mechanical clock category this past year (because I am a reasonable man who would not ask someone to do all of this in a watch...just yet). It would make an absolutely stunning autometon style clock.
On a similar note, all this talk of moonphases reminds me of a great article last month in NOVA. An amateur scholar successfully deciphered these symbols next to animals in 18,000 year old cave paintings. The symbols represent the migration/mating/birth cycles of the animals they depict in lunar months. This would represent one of the first lunar recorded lunar calendars ever documented. Definitely worth a read, to go with the Moon theme (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cave-painting-calendar-earliest-writing/). The actual scientific journal article is fascinating, but the NOVA article covers all the fun parts well enough
Coming in late on replying but that is an absolutely fantastic article and one heck of a story. It's always nice to see amateur scientists can still make real contributions. You might like this one if you haven't read it already – a retired printing technician discovered the first known case of an "Einstein" (a bit of a pun, it's meant to be read as "one stone") tile – the first known single tile shape which tiles the plane aperiodically. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/science/mathematics-tiling-einstein.html?action=click&pgtype=Interactive&state=default&module=styln-math-guide&variant=show®ion=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&block=storyline_flex_guide_recirc