Why Edinburgh's Clock is Almost Never on Time (bbc.com) 96
Arrive in Edinburgh on any given day and there are certain things you can guarantee. One of which is, the time on the turret clock atop The Balmoral Hotel is always wrong. By three minutes, to be exact. From a report: While the clock tower's story is legendary in Edinburgh, it remains a riddle for many first-timers. To the untrained eye, the 58m-high landmark is simply part of the grand finale when surveyed from Calton Hill, Edinburgh's go-to city-centre viewpoint. There it sits to the left of the Dugald Stewart Monument, like a giant exclamation mark above the glazed roof of Waverley Train Station. Likewise, the sandstone baronial tower looks equally glorious when eyed from the commanding northern ramparts of Edinburgh Castle while peering out over the battlements. It is placed at the city's very centre of gravity, between the Old Town and the New Town, at the confluence of all business and life. Except, of course, that the dial's big hand and little hand are out of sync with Greenwich Mean Time.
This bold irregularity is, in fact, a historical quirk first introduced in 1902 when the Edwardian-era building opened as the North British Station Hotel. Then, as now, it overlooked the platforms and signal boxes of Waverley Train Station, and just as porters in red jackets met guests off the train, whisking them from the station booking hall to the interconnected reception desk in the hotel's basement, the North British Railway Company owners wanted to make sure their passengers -- and Edinburgh's hurrying public -- wouldn't miss their trains. Given an extra three minutes, they reasoned, these travellers would have more time on the clock to collect their tickets, to reach their corridor carriages and to unload their luggage before the stationmaster's whistle blew. Still today, it is a calculated miscalculation that helps keep the city on time.
This bold irregularity is, in fact, a historical quirk first introduced in 1902 when the Edwardian-era building opened as the North British Station Hotel. Then, as now, it overlooked the platforms and signal boxes of Waverley Train Station, and just as porters in red jackets met guests off the train, whisking them from the station booking hall to the interconnected reception desk in the hotel's basement, the North British Railway Company owners wanted to make sure their passengers -- and Edinburgh's hurrying public -- wouldn't miss their trains. Given an extra three minutes, they reasoned, these travellers would have more time on the clock to collect their tickets, to reach their corridor carriages and to unload their luggage before the stationmaster's whistle blew. Still today, it is a calculated miscalculation that helps keep the city on time.
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They should just get rid of it (Score:2, Insightful)
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And in Bitcoin Cash!
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If it tells you to catch them from a railway station I'd suggest not using it.
I do this to my wife... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: I do this to my wife... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause women are always late, amiright?
You are a sexist pig.
He didn't say ALL women, he said his wife. You're an idiotic fabricator of stupid strawmen.
Re: I do this to my wife... (Score:1)
It gave me satisfaction that the troll was dressed down.
Re: I do this to my wife... (Score:4, Funny)
*Strawpeople you sexist pig!
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*Strawbeings, or you'll have PETA on your case.
Re: I do this to my wife... (Score:1)
He said wife, not wives, go virtue signal somewhere else jackass.
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Of course all woman are always late. In what world do you live? And what is sexist about that? We men know and cope with it! You hardly can blame a woman to be sexist, just because she is late for a date with her significant other!
On the other hand, in case you insensitive clod don't know: a lady is never late!
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My wife does this to herself. She sets the wall clock in the living room ten minutes fast. It drives me nuts. Fortunately there are other clocks around the house that sync to NTP or mobile phone networks.
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I used to set my watch 6 minutes fast, the idea being that rather than ten it isn't quite enough to be complacent about.
Then one time I was at the station, looked up at the clock, subtracted six minutes, decided I had time to buy a paper ... and missed my train.
Sad but effective (Score:3, Interesting)
She was always fashionably late, so I started telling her we had to be somewhere an hour earlier. It's worked for 30 years.
This sad technique also works for PhBs who's style is management by crisis. I once had a boss who had an "unexpected" crisis every couple of weeks - usually the big cheese was coming to review or such. Two week's work had to be done in the next week. Having been warned by previous burned-out victims, my progress report was always at least a week behind as actual productivity didn't seem to matter.
There was much moaning and pissing about impossibilities when his next "unexpected" crisis arose even though
Re: I do this to my wife... (Score:2)
Nah, everyone else is fashionably early. If you are running the event then it starts when you get there.
The fact different cultures disagree on this is somewhat of a challenge and I always wonder how mixed background couples manage this? Just imagining this must be frustrating, for example, when one person in a couple is German and the other Brazilian.
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That's why this sort of thing doesn't really work. My mother does something like that at home and she's still late to virtually everything.
The problem is that eventually, you kind of figure out that it's not the real time, you've actually got X extra minutes and tend to use them. Folks who don't have time management issues and treat it like what it is, the time, don't really have that issue.
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You use X plus a bit more. That's the problem.
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they don't want the trains seem to be leaving too late.
that's the problem. they have the most horrible on-time record in the country.
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Leaving late isn't an issue. If anything it's better, since it gives you slightly more chance to catch it.
What matters is when it arrives.
News for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
Stuff that mattered in 1902.
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Not nerdy enough to find interest in the history of clock accuracy, eh?
Get off my lawn.
Now where are my meds, I have a feeling I'm within 3 minutes of needing them.
I hate this practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people I know set their car clocks a few minutes ahead to help them arrive on time. Every now and then I'll forget the quirk and think I'm late somewhere with them.
Stop setting your clocks incorrectly and leave when you need to like an adult.
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Good idea, people drive better when in a hurry...
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There was even a Sniglet for this back in the days of Not Necessarily the News. It is called timefoolery.
Re:I hate this practice (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people I know set their car clocks a few minutes ahead to help them arrive on time.
Our office wall clock was set about 8 minutes out as it takes that long to walk to the building where all the meetings are held. Unfortunately that lead to the inevitable conversation "That clock is 8min fast, we still have time" and then would arrive late anyway.
Lots of past tense in this post since we got a new team member who while on night shift on his first week set the clock to the correct time and screwed us all over. Then he asked why we don't just leave 8min early and it appears it took someone to say it out aloud for everyone to realise how dumb the original idea was.
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he asked why we don't just leave 8min early and it appears it took someone to say it out aloud for everyone to realise how dumb the original idea was.
Maybe he should be talking to governments about DST.
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No I should not. Given that DST is about bringing different groups together on a common time while changing their relationship with solar time. One department changing the clock is the exact opposite thing of a government defined timezone to suit an economic area. It's more akin to an employer offering flex time and a company deciding then to unilaterally work from 7 to 3 instead of 9 to 5.
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I tried the off-set clock trick for a little while and eventually it stops working because deep down I know the clock's wrong and I can let it slide a little bit.
My current system, for when I have a schedule I must meet, is two alarms: one that gives me plenty of time to get ready / finish what I'm doing, and the other is when I absolutely must start walking out the door to my car to still make it on time.
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Stop setting your clocks incorrectly and leave when you need to like an adult.
There are so many problems I have, that if this suboptimal one solves my problem of being late, that's good enough and I'll worry about much more serious problems instead.
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Some people I know set their car clocks a few minutes ahead to help them arrive on time. Every now and then I'll forget the quirk and think I'm late somewhere with them.
Stop setting your clocks incorrectly and leave when you need to like an adult.
I set my clocks 8 and 1/2 minutes late so that I can get to my train on time.
Almost? (Score:1)
Re:Almost? (Score:5, Informative)
"That the clock is wrong every day of the year is not technically true, either. Its time is stretched to accommodate an annual event. On New Year’s Eve, or Hogmanay as Scots call it, the tower welcomes a special one-off house call, when an engineer is dispatched to remedy the timekeeping error. “Plain and simple, the clock needs to be right for the traditional countdown to the midnight bells,” said Davidson, leading our two-man party back down to the hotel’s grand lobby. “Beyond that, everyone relies on it being wrong.”
It's an anti-formalist argument (Score:3)
If you formalize the system, in this case having an accurate clock, people attempt to game the system by thinking they have more time than they do, because people are perpetual optimists.
If you deformalize the system, and have the clock represent an approximate value, they become concerned that they do not have enough time, and rush to get there early so that they will be on time.
Bring on the Russian tourists (Score:4, Funny)
Another world famous clock to attract Russian tourists on day trips from Moscow. :P
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Why did this fluff piece get onto slashdot?
Snail speed news day then? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a non story. It is known to the people that matter, those who live and work in 'Old Reekie'.
Oh, and it is "Waverley Railway Station". Mention "Train Station" to most people in the City and they'll wonder what planet you are from.
Yours, a resident of Leith.
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Why am I not surprised to find some lowlander so backwards they think anything not as backwards as themselves must be from another planet?!
The only reason you're not in England is that people came south from another planet to save you.
If you don't know that Scottish people know about train stations, perhaps you're actually English but nobody told you?
https://www.scotslanguage.com/... [scotslanguage.com]
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What nationality are you pretending to be today?
I do the same thing (Score:2)
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with the clock in my car. Works great.
Only a moron could possible think that this "works" in any way.
You fucking set the clock, and you know how far off it is. This doesn't fool anyone.
If it works at all, it's because you know you need to be there by such-and-such time... just like a normal clock that wasn't set by a dipshit.
Solar time (Score:2)
Why not metric time? (Score:2)
Which way? (Score:2)
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If you don't know which way to set the clock to prevent missing public transit, you probably don't need to know and can go back to your life of kicking rocks, or else get back on your horse, as the case may be.
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Waverley is roofed over, almost to the tunnels to the west and to the line curves to the east. The time window in which the train drivers could see the clock (on a tower, far above line level) is going to be fractions of a second, during which the drivers would have to be watching for jumpers, checking signal status, etc. I'm by no means sure that you can actually see the tower from anywhere at train level.
Almost? (Score:1)
If the clock is always 3 minutes off, then how is it "almost never" on time? It should be "never" on time.
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So once a year it's correct.
Hence 'almost never.'
Calm down and reflect (Score:3)
To all you unhappy grouches:
This story leads into what could be a bit of interesting neuro-psych research. I know for a fact (Trigger Warning: Anecdotal Evidence Alert) that, even though my alarm clock has been 10 minutes ahead for at least 10 years, I still react to it by behaving as though it were correct time -- even while I consciously understand that it isn't.
I'm willing to (Trigger Warning Two) extrapolate and guess there are other folks like me.
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Did they really mean Dugald Stewart Monument? (Score:2)
It's a strange reference because the Dugald Stewart Monument is actually on Calton Hill. I suppose you could position yourself on the hill such that the Balmoral tower appears left of the monument but at that point you would be pretty much beside the monument. Now if you're on the hill looking down toward Princes Street then the thing that the Balmoral tower will actually appear to be left of is the better known Walter Scott Monument.
Terrible name change (Score:2)
I've always hated that name change. "The North British Hotel" had a certain majesty to it, whilst "The Balmoral" sounds like a twee, semi-detached B&B in the suburbs with lace doilies under the jam jars.
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Inconsiderate Scots (Score:2)
They set the clock 3 minutes ahead which ruins all the jokes about the clock being 5.4E+10 meters away from town.