MAN-MADE CLOCKS AND WATCHESThree young boys, lured by the fine weather on a warm spring day, decided to skip school in the afternoon. The problem was knowing when to come home, so that their mothers would think they were merely returning from school. One of the boys had an old alarm clock that would no longer run, and they quickly devised a scheme : The boy with the clock set it by a clock at home when he left after lunch at 12 :45. After they met they would take turns as timekeeper, counting to 60 and moving the minute hand ahead one minute at a time Almost immediately two of the boys got into an argument over the rate at which the third was counting, and he stopped counting to defend his own judgment. They had "lost" the time-crude as their system was-before their adventure was begun, and spent most of their afternoon alternately accusing one another and trying to estimate how much time their lapses in counting had consumed."Losing" the time is a constant problem even for timekeepers much more sophisticated than the boys with their old alarm clock.And regulating the clock so that it will "keep" time accurately, even with high-quality equipment, presents even greater challenges. We have already discussed some of these difficulties, in comparison with the relatively simple keeping of a device for measuring length or mass, for example. We've talked about what a clock is, and have mentioned briefly several different kinds of clocks. Now let's look more specifically at the components common to all clocks, and the features that distinguish one kind of clock from another.
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