"D" wrote in message
b.com...
On 7/6/2011 10:24 AM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
n Accutron will run fast with modern cells.

What a crap design then.

I'm afraid your ignorance is showing.


How old are you?

The Accutron was designed 50 years ago. It uses a discrete circuit, which
seemed rather marvelously miniature at the time. And the Accutron was the
first wris****ch accurate to a minute a month -- quite an achievement for
a
"crap" design.



Thanks for that, Bill. The design is quite elegant, with the ruby tipped
tuning fork tines operating a micro-toothed wheel. That, the fact that it
hums rather than ticks, and that the sweep second hand moves smoothly like
an AC clock. Very unique concept. The design was also used in a marine
chronometer for navigating longitude, which requires high accuracy
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/exp...cfm?ID=ZAA0275. They were
also used in space, with the first Accutron timepiece sent up aboard the
Vanguard 1 satellite, which achieved orbit on March 17, 1958 (5 months
before I was born). Very cool, but ya know, some people will probably not
get it, not to mention being rude enough to pointlessly dismiss with the
word "crap" something another person is sincerely interested in.

Kids.

Gareth is not a kid, and is in fact a highly experienced electronic service
engineer, as are many of us on here. I'm sure that he did not intend any
direct disrespect to you personally, as that is not generally his nature.
However, just because a design is 50 years old, and was 'elegant' in its
concept, that does not make it necessarily 'good', and by today's standards,
a design that purports to be an extremely accurate timepiece, but which runs
at an incorrect speed when the batteries are replaced, probably legitimately
counts as being 'crap'.

Arfa