Which Way North? (Part I)

Let's consider the compass.

I was rooting around in an old duffle bag the other day and I stumbled upon the lensatic compass I carried for years in the Army.

The 1986 production Stocker & Yale lensatic compass I carried
during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
It sits on the 1:250,000 scale map I used while conducing geographic
and soils analysis in the northern Saudi Arabian desert.
 It was the results of these reconnaissance efforts that helped convince
General Schwartzkopf and CENTCOM Headquarters that the
famous 'left hook' maneuver was feasible.

It is pretty beat up.  It was already used when it was issued to me back in 1989, and I used it a lot in places like Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Korea, Panama and across the US.  Like a lot of things military, it is somewhat overbuilt; a big green chunk of aluminum housing a compass. It was one of those pieces of equipment that you forgot about until you needed it, and when you needed it (particularly in places like Iraq or Panama), you needed it bad.  Whenever I opened it and let the compass card swing free I would always let out a little sigh of relief as the arrow settled down and pointed the way north.

My compass never failed, and that is what we should expect of a compass - it should never fail to point the way.  And they rarely do.  That is the absolute beauty of the compass as a navigational instrument.  It is so simple in concept and design that even poorly made examples do just what we ask of them - point the way north.

The compass is the most basic navigation tool and certainly one of the first, if not the first man-made navigation tool.  Before the compass there was... the human eye?  Well, we had maps of a sort, but they are really not direction finding tools.  Humans had spent thousands of years studying the skies with the naked eye, and got pretty good at estimating location, direction, seasons, etc. using the stars.  Certain groups like the Pacific Islanders even got damned good at open water navigation using just the stars, very rudimentary maps (made of woven plant material and shell) and an intimate knowledge of sea conditions and winds.  But what happened when the clouds closed in and the heavens disappeared?  Mankind was lost.  Literally, lost.


What was needed was a device that pointed the way.


The compass is a device so ancient that it's true origins are all but lost to us, shrouded in history and mystery and claimed by so many civilizations that the real story will probably never be known.  What we do know is that the properties of the mysterious lodestone (the mineral magnetite) were known to multiple civilizations at the same time.  Mostly it was viewed as a magical substance, it's attractant properties giving it special medicinal powers.  Ancient physicians concocted all sorts of uses for lodestone, claiming it cured everything from skin rashes to the plague.  Even today you can go on Amazon.com and buy bags of lodestones labeled for use in 'natural healing' practices.  (Aroma therapy candles and Yanni's greatest hits, anyone?).  While it is generally acknowledged that it was the Chinese who discovered the direction finding properties of the lodestone, they never matured the technology beyond the most basic design.

A Chinese compass.
A magnetized chunk of iron (shaped like a fish) suspended in a bowl of water.
Simple, yet remarkably effective.
Alas, it seems they never got much past this stage of development.

What is known is that someone, somewhere, magnetized an iron nail or needle with a lodestone and then noticed that the needle acquired magical properties.  The first thing noted is that when suspended by string or floated on water the needle would swing freely and always pointed in the same direction, as though guided by a mysterious, unseen hand.  The next magical property was that it always pointed to the pole star, or Polaris.  At first this phenomena only served to enhance the perception of the magical properties of the lodestone - if it can impart such magical behavior to a simple iron needle then surely, surely, it must be capable of imparting even more wondrous effects to the human body.  Or predicting the future.  Or curing the insanity.  Or defeating enemy armies.  Or...  Well, you pick an application, because folks back in the Middle Ages thought the lodestone was the answer to just about every problem afflicting humanity.


Eventually someone, most likely a seafarer, figured out that if this magnetized needle always pointed north, regardless of the weather, then it could be useful for indicating direction while at sea.  This sharp sailor probably lived along the west coast of Italy in the 13th Century in one of the bustling centers of seagoing commerce scattered up and down the coast, from Genoa in the north to Salerno in the south.  Italian legend attributes the development of the navigational compass to a guy named Flavio Gioia, who lived in a town just outside of Salerno in the early 14th Century.  Scholarship casts serious doubt on this claim, but since nobody has come up with a better story the Italians are sticking with it.  Plus, it's good for the tourist trade.

Flavio Gioia.
He may, or may not, have developed the compass into a serious
tool for use aboard ship.  But then, he may, or may not, have
actually existed.  Who knows, but it's a good story
and we'll run with it!

What is known is that once the navigational compass was developed it's use exploded across the Mediterranean Sea, and then across the known world.  I have no doubt that hundreds of 14th Century sailors, stepping aboard a ship carrying one of those newfangled compasses and being told that it uses a needle magnetized by a lodestone, smacked themselves on the forehead and shouted "Why didn't I think of that?"  It was that obvious.

An early Portuguese ship's compass

The compass is such a simple tool that everything that came after was merely a refinement on the initial design.  Basic refinements came quickly - improvements in indicating direction (development of the compass 'card'), improvements in mounting and suspeding the needle, improvements in housing the device aboard ship.  The basic compass design was quickly brought ashore and miniaturized, and small and easy to carry compasses began to appear.  For centuries, however, the compass remained a simple device - a needle placed against an indicator that showed the cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Northeast, Southwest, North Northeast, etc.).   This design seems to have prevailed right up into the 19th Century.

An F. Barker & Son pocket compass from  1858.
One of the earliest pocket compasses I've seen that combines both a
traditional compass card showing cardinal directions (N, S, E, W, NE, SE, etc.)
and degree indicators (01 - 360).

What took place in the intervening years was an increased understanding of the properties of magnetisim in general and the magnetic properties of the Earth in particular.  Scientists and experienced navigators had know for years that the magnetic compass didn't point directly to the pole star, but pointed to the east or west of Polaris depending on where you were in the world.  During the Age of Exploration it was observed that the needle was off a few degrees either direction in most of the northern hemisphere.  In a few places the alignment was perfect - the needle pointed straight north, other places it pointed almost due east or west (particularly at high latitudes), but generally it was just a few degrees off from Polaris.  This fluctuation was not consistent - a scientist or a navigator could not accurately predict what the magnetic difference would be at a future location based on observations at his current location.  Keen observers also saw that the needle itself would not always float horizonally, but would 'dip'  just a little bit at different locations.  Even more mysterious and concerning, scientists and navigators that returned to the same spot again and again over a period of years noted that the amount of magnetic variation differed.  It was as though something unseen was causing the needle to shift over time.

These observations eventually led to the understanding that the Earth itself is a giant magnet and that the compass needle is not 'pointing' north, but the needle is aligning itself with the Earth's own natural lines of magnetic influence.  This discovery moved the compass from the realm of 'mysterious instrument' to 'well understood tool'.  It also triggered the realization that the compass is a flawed tool, inaccurate and erratic, and to be truly useful for safe navigation its relationship with what we now call true north must be studied, understood and applied.

Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650), French philosopher and physicist
 kinda' sorta' figured it out back in the early 1600s.

I won't dive into the details, but Western nations alone or in concert expended huge amounts of money studying the earth's magnetic properties.  First to apply it to a better understanding of compass accuracy and later to better understand complex geodynamic principles.  (For example, it is the existence of the Earth's magnetic fields that first led geophyisicists to deduce that the Earth's core is little more than a huge chunk of iron). The study of magnetisim is still a leading discipline, as scientists work to understand how the Earth's magnetic field acts as a shield from a lot of the nasty stuff the Sun throws at us, or how a panetary body's magnetic field can yield enromous information about its interior structure.  Compass users are the happy beneficiaries of a lot of this research, since we now have an intimate understanding of how the Earth's magnetic field influences our compass bearings.

Yikes!  The Earth's magnetic field shields us from a lot of
nasty stuff the Sun sends our way.

Today the answer is obvious to us.  The Earth is a giant magnet that has a geographic north and south pole (where the lines of longitude converge) and a magnetic north and south pole (where the magnetic lines of influence converge).  The two don't match.  In fact, they aren't even close.  Today the magnetic north pole is located high in the Canadian Arctic about 535 miles south of the geographic north pole, and it is always moving.  The magnetic pole shifts slightly every day in response to influences like solar storms, and over time it drifts - right now it appears to be set to wander over the polar region and settle somewhere in northern Siberia in the next 50 years.

The wanderings of the Magnetic North Pole, 1600 - 2000

While the thought of a wandering pole may cause some readers distress the good news it that we know where its headed and we can accurately track its progress.  If we know precisely where the north pole is located day-to-day we can quickly and accurately calculate the variation between magnetic north and true north for any point on earth.  This calculated difference between magnetic north and true north is known as magnetic declination.

The difference between True North and Magnetic North.
The angular distance between the two poles is what we refer to as magnetic declination.
But why is the south end of the needle pointing North?
Remember your basic principles of magnetism - opposites attract.
The end of your compass needle that indicates North is actually the south end!  

In years past governments would periodically publish maps showing lines of magnetic influence, or isogonic lines and include instructions on how to calculate updated declination based on the predicted drift.  However, today you can access one of several web sites that allow you to input your current location and calculate an accurate magnetic declination.  This means you can know precisely the relationship between magnetic north as indicated by your compass and true north, and compensate for declination either directly on the compass or in later calculations.

As far back as 1702 European nations were investigating
and mapping isogonic lines to determine magnetic declination

Knowing the magnetic declination for your location or region and compensating for it is the key step to accurate navigation using a compass!  Once you have mastered this task you can get yourself from one point to the next with confidence.

Whew!  We've covered a lot in this posting.  I'll pause here to let you digest what I've presented and to let you do a bit of your own research if you are so inclined.  There are a lot of great resources on these topics available on the web, many of which I've linked to in this posting.  Let me add one more link to a NOAA web movie that does a great job of portraying the relationship between the movement of the magnetic poles and the corresponding shifting of the isogonic lines over time.

Next up we'll take a look at modern compass design and land navigation techniques.

Stay tuned!

Brian

Book Of The Month - 'The American Practical Navigator (Bowditch)'

The Book of the Month for October 2010 comes under the heading of Books Every Man Should Own.

In 1802 a Massachusetts surveyor, sailor, ship owner, amateur mathematician and scientist and overall practical genius published a work on navigation that was so eminently practical, accurate and easy to use (so damned Yankee-like, as some would say) that it revolutionized maritime navigation.

That man, Nathaniel Bowditch, and his work, 'The New American Practical Navigator' brought maritime navigation to the masses, and it is this work that set the foundation for the 19th Century explosion of American maritime trade.  The impact of Bowditch's work can be said to have had the same impact on the US maritime industry as the development of the marine chronometer had on the British maritime industry.

Bowditch's original 1802 edition

By the early 1800s the Industrial Revolution was hitting its stride and raw materials and finished goods were pouring out of the expanding American interior.  Demand was exploding not just between American cities and states, but the rapidly expanding textile industry in Europe was driving an almost insatiable demand for American raw materials like cotton.  Suddenly America discovered she had worldwide markets, and the fledgling American maritime industry was growing apace to make sure that American goods were carried on American ships.

Using Bowditch's work, a literate and sharp young seafarer could teach himself all he needed to know to safely navigate hs vessel across the vast emptiness of the world's oceans, or down the treacherous coasts of the Americas.

Bowditch's genius came into play in two specific areas.  First was the accuracy of his navigation tables.  Working with an edition of a popular British navigation book titled 'The Practical Navigator', Bowditch noted a number of errors in the navigation tables.  Most were minor - transposed numbers out at the 3rd or 4th decimal - but some were critical, like a misplaced leap year in a solar declination table.  Bowditch applied his mathematical and analytical skills towards cleaning up these tables.  When he was finished seafarers had, for the first time, a complete and accurate set of navigation tables.

Second was Bowditch's ability to distill maritime navigation concepts and techniques down into easily understood and practiced methods.  Bowditch realized that most navigators and ships' captains of his day had only a basic education, and newfangled navigational instruments like the marine chronometer were out of the reach of most.  Bowditch focused on 'practical' navigation, emphasizing dead reckoning techniques.  While celestial navigation was included in his work, Bowditch understood that most navigators would use it only for latitude determination (again, the no marine chronometer thing), and they still relied on dead reckoning to estimate their longitude.  Bowditch incorporated improved, easily understood dead reckoning methods into his work that greatly improved the accuracy and safety of open water navigation.

(It should be noted that Bowditch did spend a good bit of time discussing the Lunar Distance method of longitude determination in his book.  The Lunar Distance method is quite accurate, but doing it successfully takes a good bit of practice and it is difficult to execute while standing on the deck of a ship at sea.  However, the Lunar Distance method did not require the use of one of those newfangled, expensive and temperamental marine chronometers.  My suspicion is that most navigators didn't even try to use the Lunar Distance method.  They just relied on an accurate latitude determination using star or solar shots to develop a line of position, then used their well honed dead reckoning skills to guesstimate longitude.  This was 'close enough' until they made landfall and could pick up known landmarks and adjust their position.)

In the beginning Bowditch was out to just correct the errors he noted in 'The Practical Navigator'.  The book's American publisher asked him to contribute any other improvements or changes he felt were necessary.  Over time Bowditch contributed so many updates, improved techniques and additional chapters that the publisher felt that the work had become a full reflection of Bowditch's efforts.  Therefore, the 1802 edition was credited fully to Nathaniel Bowditch and the title changed to 'The New American Practical Navigator'.


Nathaniel Bowditch continued to update the work until his death in 1839.  Over those 37 years his work became the navigation reference standard for the US maritime industry.  'The New American Practical Navigator' could be found aboard almost every US vessel plying the world's oceans.  It was purchased and used by ships' captains and officers, along with schools, training academies, universities and, most notably, by the US Navy.  It was considered such an important text that in 1868 the US Navy Hydrographic Office purchased the copyright and took over updating and publishing the book.

OK, so we know how Bowditch's work got here.  What about the why?  Why does every Man need a copy?  Simple.  It is stuffed full of so much useful and necessary manly knowledge that every guy needs a copy.

Need to know how to adjust your binnacle compass?
Need to know how to degauss your ship?
Need to know how to adjust for perpendicularity error on your sextant?
Need to know how to solve right spherical triangles using Napier's Rules of Circular Parts?
Need to know how to construct a great circle track on a Mercator projection?
Need to know how to route your fleet to avoid cyclones in the North Pacific?
Need to know how to plot a line of position using a Loran-C signal?

The answers to all of these and many, many more of life's vexing manly issues can be found in 'The American Practical Navigator'!

You can buy a copy of 'The American Practical Navigator' directly from the US Government Printing Office or from Amazon.com for a relative pittance.  It is a manly book, with well over 800 pages stuffed full of manly knowledge.  Or, you can be a cheapskate and download a copy free from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency website.

Either way, if you are a Man get a copy!

Brian

iPhone Application of the Millennium

It is no secret to those close to me that I love the Apple iPhone. Not in a 'fanboy' way, but in the way of a serious business customer that has been sorely disappointed by just about every cell phone and mobile device he's owned (or been issued) before the iPhone came along.

The iPhone is the first device that offered virtually no compromises when it comes to mobile functionality. It is a serious business tool that brings the internet, phone, email and dedicated apps to the user's pocket with an extraordinary level of integration and remarkably few compromises.

The key to the iPhone's success is Apple's operating system for the iPhone (at this writing OS 4.1) and the company's extremely tight (some would say anal) control of third party application approval and distribution via iTunes. Yet it is this tight control that has helped make the iPhone what it is - an extremely stable and rich development environment that allows developers to produce some stunning applications.

The application I'm going to talk about today is produced by a the two-man team that make up Emerald Sequoia LLC. Emerald Sequoia makes several time and astronomy-related apps for the iPhone and iPad, but by far their pièce de résistance is their Emerald Chronometer application.

Emerald Chronometer is really several applications in one.  The first application is a NTP (network time protocol) synchronization tool that connects to one of several NTP servers, grabs the atomic time signal and synchronizes the application to this highly accurate signal.  It turns brings atomic clock accuracy to the iPhone*

Next, Emerald Chronometer opens a series of exquisitely executed virtual time pieces and synchronizes them with the time signal.  The application offers fifteen beautifully rendered 'mechanical' watches with amazing complications.  A watch complication is a feature built into a watch that offers something more than the display of hours, minutes and seconds, it is something that adds complexity to a watch; a day-date display is a common and simple example of a complication. 

Each virtual mechanical watch offers its own set of unique complications tied to the theme of the watch.  Everything from a simple stopwatch with a split timer to a watch that tracks the position of all the inner planets in a heliocentric view.  You can spend hours playing with these complications and uncovering all the unique and fanciful options they offer.  Some are truly useful (stopwatch and moon phase), some just fun (zodiac phases).

The Geneva

The Terra

A quality mechanical watch with these functions would run into the thousands of dollars or more, often way more.  A top-of-the-line Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon sold at auction back in 2007 for $1,240,400 (that's one million, two hundred and forty thousand and four hundred dollars).  I can get the same functionality running on my iPhone for a whopping $4.99. 

Sure, I'd love the Patek, but I'll happily settle for the Emerald Sequoia and not worry about scratching the watch face while schlepping around work.

In closing - if you have an iPhone and you love watches and time keeping I strongly recommend you get this app.  Just how good is it?  If Emerald Sequoia announced today that future versions of Emerald Chronometer won't run on the iPhone 3G (my current phone) I'll be standing at the AT&T Wireless sales desk this afternoon, plunking down the money for a new iPhone 4.  It's that good.

Brian

(*The iPhone's internal clock is notoriously sloppy for such a modern device, and to make matters worse the OS won't allow applications like Emerald Chronometer to update the system clock.  This means that the atomic quality time keeping this (and other) applications bring to the iPhone is only available as long as the application is open and running.  Shame on you, Steve Jobs.)

Book Of The Month - September 2010

This month's book selection is a close tie-in with my previous posting, "It's About Time".

When science author Dava Sobel attended an obscure symposium in 1995 that was focused on the history of longitude determination she had no idea that her resulting book would capture the imagination of millions, spark a minor revolution in science writing and almost single-handedly ruin the antique chronometer market for collectors everywhere.

Sobel's book, 'Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time' is a true minor classic and stands as one of the best pieces of popular science literature and history ever written. High praise, eh? Well, her work deserves it!

Precise ocean navigation was a problem that vexed seafarers for hundreds of years.  Once Christopher Columbus sailed westward over the horizon and discovered the rich (and exploitable) Americas the rush was on.  The English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch soon found themselves in a mad race to plant the flag on these new continents and extract as much wealth as possible.  The riches of the New World were limitless - timber and fur at first, mixed with some precious metals.  Once agriculture was established, sugar cane, tobacco and eventually cotton became the huge exports that drove large scale agricultural commercialization, and very quickly drove the need for cheap labor - African slaves.

The situation got even worse when Magellan rounded the tip of South America and proved that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were linked.  Suddenly the entire Pacific Ocean was opened to sea-borne trade from the west.  The Spanish in particular heavily exploited the trans-Pacific trade routes, moving the wealth of the orient - spices, plants, gems and precious metals - from the Philippines eastward across the Pacific to New World outposts.  In major Spanish settlements on the Pacific side of the Americas like Panama City this Far East treasure was mixed with the riches of the New World, hauled overland to bustling cities like Portobello in Panama and loaded onto waiting galleons for movement on to Spain.

The New World had become a limitless warehouse of raw material that drove the exploding economies of Western Europe.

Yet, all this movement of raw material from the New World to the Old was accomplished using imprecise and error-prone methods of navigation.

Determining latitude (distance north or south of the equator) was fairly easy, and just about every seafaring culture figured it out early in their history.  Latitude determination is as easy as measuring the angle of the pole star above the horizon, and that angular distance is your latitude.

Longitude, however, was an entirely different matter.  Longitude determination is really the measurement of time - the time difference in hours, minutes and seconds between your current location and a known reference location.  Conceptually it is pretty simple - determine precisely when local noon occurs at your location and compare that time with local time at a reference location.  That time difference, expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, is your longitude.  The mathematics are really quite simple and easily grasped by any marginally educated ship captain or sailing master.

(Today we refer to that reference location as the Prime Meridian, or the zero line of longitude.  By international agreement the Prime Meridian runs through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.  All longitudinal measurements today are based off of this Prime Meridian.  Since the British Government also installed reference clocks in the Royal Observatory this is the genesis of the term 'Greenwich Mean Time' or GMT.  But I'm getting ahead of the story.)

Countries, navies, ship owners and ship captains were losing far too many vessels, far too much cargo and far too many souls to bad navigation.  By the early 1700s the 'longitude problem' had become one of the critical issues of the time.  It occupied the thoughts of kings, admirals, sea captains and scientific thinkers across Europe.

One thing stood in the way of the longitude - accurate time keeping.  To accurately determine longitude you need accurate clocks - clocks that can keep time to within a few seconds while carried aboard ships that are pitching and rolling in the open sea.  By the early 18th Century it was thought that such clocks were beyond the capabilities of man.  Some of the best minds in Europe were so convinced of this that they investigated other methods, some quite goofy: moor ships at pre-determined intervals across the Atlantic and have them all fire a cannon at a pre-determined time of day, map the lines of magnetic declination (deviation) and develop charts that relate declination to longitude, and my personal favorite, the 'powder of sympathy'.  From Wikipedia:

"The powder (of sympathy) was also applied to solve the longitude problem in the suggestion of an anonymous pamphlet of 1687 entitled "Curious Enquiries." The pamphlet theorized that a wounded dog could be put aboard a ship, with the animal's discarded bandage left in the trust of a timekeeper on shore, who would then dip the bandage into the powder at a predetermined time and cause the creature to yelp, thus giving the captain of the ship an accurate knowledge of the time"

OK, the howling dog trick didn't work, but other methods actually came quite close.  One technique called the lunar distance method actually worked, but was difficult to execute on the deck of a pitching ship and required a good bit of complex math.  It may have worked, but it wasn't really practical.

In one of the first examples of applied research the British Parliament established a competition known as the 'Longitude Prize'.  Anyone who came up with an accurate and easy to execute method for determining longitude at sea could claim a quite substantial prize and the accolades of scientists and sailors around the world.

Into this breach stepped a young self-taught clock maker and wood worker named John Harrison.  A remarkable natural talent combined with keen intelligence led him, over the course of almost 30 years, to develop a series of clocks that held remarkable accuracy while at sea.  His culminating achievement, the H-4 (Harrison Number 4) is the clock that ultimately won him the Longitude Prize and served as the pattern for all mechanical marine chronometers that followed.

Ms. Sobel's fine book details the story of John Harrison's development of the marine chronometer and overlays it with all of the political intrigue, scientific backstabbing and, ultimately, royal intervention that swirled around Harrison's work.  Harrison's winning of the Longitude Prize was not a foregone conclusion, and he had to fight for recognition and prove and re-prove his invention time and again.  Eventually he triumphed, and the concept of time-based longitude determination remained the standard until the advent of GPS late in the 20th Century.

'Longitude: The Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time' is a marvelous little work - well researched, engagingly written and a joy to read.  I've read my copy at least three times since first buying it back in 1998.  In fact, I've given away four or more copies to friends and relatives who expressed an interest in the topic.  When I decided to make 'Longitude' this month's book selection I went hunting for my old copy.  I couldn't find it, and I guess I must have loaned it out or given it away.  I immediately ordered another copy from Amazon, but this time I ordered the illustrated edition.  I must say that this newer edition is even better than the original.  All the text of Sobel's original work is there, but the story is enhanced by a large number of very well chosen and annotated illustrations and photographs. It makes a great story better!

Brian

It's About Time

I love time.  I love the idea of time. I love the concepts of time.  I love the history of time.

Get it? I'm fascinated by time.

I'm not talking about a Steven Hawking-level consideration of time - the metaphysical consideration of when and how time started.  I'm more down to earth.  Literally.  My fascination with time is rooted in the practical applications of time.  How it is measured, how it has effected human history, how we use it and how it affects our daily lives.

I have worked most of my life in professions and disciplines that are ruled by time. The US Army takes time very, very seriously in both the practical human dimension ("The meeting starts precisely at 1430. Be there!") and in the absolute system dimension (example: the anti-jamming systems built into our military radios are based on extremely precise time synchronization). As a soldier you very quickly become aware of how important time is to the whole organization and you ignore it at your professional peril. Some of the biggest ass-chewings I got in the Army were for missing meetings because I lost track of time.

In the civilian world I manage systems that are ruled by time. I manage the GPS-based surveying and precise positioning systems at the worlds busiest airport. At its very core, GPS is about the extremely precise measurement of time.

I am surrounded by time, immersed in time and, occasionally, consumed by time.  And it fascinates me.

It's All About Time

Mankind has always been fascinated by time.  It seems that once we realized that we needed to track things - planting seasons, birthing seasons for domestic animals, festival times, etc. then the concept of time took hold in the human psyche and has never let go.  In fact, I believe that it is the understanding of the concept of time and the ability to consciously plan against future time that is a uniquely human trait and one that separates us from the lower species. The understanding and use of time is very much a part of the human 'spark' that philosophers talk about.

Virtually every advanced human civilization was fascinated by time.  The Mayans, the Chinese, the Greeks and the Romans all expended enormous intellectual and physical capital in the development and maintenance of time systems, first in the macro application (accurate calendars) and then in the more precise daily measurement of time (what we think of today as clocks). The more complex the civilization the greater the interest in, and need for, accurate timekeeping.

Two of the great monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam, were obsessed with time from their beginnings.  Ritualized daily prayer was (and in many cases still is) a driving force in these religions, so the need to accurately divide the day into equal parts drove a cultural fascination with time and timekeeping. While the Christian concept of ritualized daily prayer has become sloppy over the past thousand years or so, Islam still holds fast to the tenant. The fascination with accurate timekeeping remains a critical part of the Islamic culture.

The Al-Jazari candle clock

(I have been told by several sources that it was the Islamic world that kept the Swiss mechanical watch industry alive in the 1970s and 80s.  As the quartz watch craze swept the Western world sales of quality mechanical watches dried up in the that region.  However, the demand for high end mechanical time pieces grew with Middle East customers who were flush with petro-dollars and a fascination with time.  Eventually the West came to it's senses and the mechanical watch industry is healthier than ever.)

The human need for accurate timekeeping reached a peak in the early 18th Century with the explosion of sea-borne international trade.  By the late 17th Century we had accurately mapped the world, located the continents and key cities, and identified commercial markets. The sea-borne trade routes had been laid out, efficient ships developed and a whole maritime infrastructure established that was poised to exploit the exploding demand for international goods. The problem was that countries and corporations were losing too many ships to bad navigation. What was lacking was an accurate, easily understood and easily taught method of determining a ship's longitude (location east or west of a prime meridian) while at sea. Fixing latitude (location north or south of the equator) was well understood and easy to determine with simple instruments, but developing a method to easily and quickly determine longitude from the deck of a rolling ship in the middle of the ocean was a problem that had vexed the best minds of Europe for hundreds of years.

By the early 1700s highly accurate land-based longitudinal determination had been going on for over 50 years, but it required complex astronomic observations and the use of large, heavy and fragile pendulum clocks. What was needed was a simple and accurate method that could be easily practiced by marginally educated ships captains across the maritime fleet. The best minds of the time understood that accurate timekeeping was the key to solving this problem, but clocks that could keep good time aboard a pitching and rolling ship were beyond the technology of the time, or so they thought. In one of the earliest examples of government sponsored applied research the British Parliament launched a competition to see who could develop an accurate method of determining longitude at sea. The ultimate winner of that prize was a self taught clock maker named William Harrison, who gave the world the H-4 chronometer and made accurate maritime navigation a reality.

It was all about time...

William Harrison's H-4 Chronometer, 1760

(I glossed over far too many of the details related to longitude determination and the development of the chronometer, so if you want the whole story I strongly recommend you read Dava Sobel's minor classic Longitude.)


The Industrialization of Time 


For the next 200 years the mechanical clock was refined, standardized, downsized and mass-produced to the point that the pocket or wrist watch, the mantle clock and the bedside alarm clock were affordable to the common working man. As industrialization pushed forward and workers flocked to the cities to meet the growing demand for labor, time entered our collective consciousness as never before. Suddenly a man had to be on time. On time for work, on time for lunch, on time to church, on time to the doctor. Industrialization made cheap time pieces possible while at the same time driving the requirement for better time management. One requirement fed the other.

The Big Ben mechanical alarm clock.
My Grandmother had one of these
and when it went off there was
no mistaking the message:
"Get your ass out of bed!"

The concept of parsing a day into discreet time segments for specific functions was a revolutionary concept. For most of history the worker's day was ruled by three time checks - sun up, noon and sun down. The roosters took care of sun up, the bell in the church steeple took care of noon and his own eyes took care of sun down. That was all that really mattered. Starting in the mid-1800s, with a watch in his pocket the common man could now easily and accurately plan his day. When the boss told him to be at work at 8:00 he could backwards plan and know that if he wanted to be at work five minutes early he needed to catch the 7:30 street car, meaning he had to be out the door and on his way to the street car stop by 7:25. Likewise, if his wife told him dinner would be served at 6:00 he knew he needed to leave to saloon by 5:45 for a brisk walk home, knowing it took at least 15 minutes for the smell of beer and cheap cigars to blow out of his clothes.

But whose time was he following? You see, all time is relative. For our prototypical common man working in the mid-1800s the answer was simple - set your clock to the boss man's clock. In fact, even today that's a good idea (ha, ha). But what did the boss set his to? This was easy too - just set it to local time. Most clocks were regulated to local noon. The problem is that local noon is different everywhere. This wasn't a real big deal until the railroad came to town.

For a few decades during the mid-to-late 1800s the railroads simply make use of local time. This was when railroads were a regional phenomenon with fragmented ownership. Local time was a recognized problem, but it was manageable. However, after the Civil War and the massive railroad consolidations and the push for a transcontinental rail line the major line operators realized that using local time simply was not going to work anymore. There were too many time changes as trains flew down the tracks (at a blistering 40 mph) from one town to the next or one state to the next. Since the railroads operated on a time coordination system and single rail lines were shared by multiple trains, time management became an absolutely critical issue. After a few horrific and highly publicized train crashes in the 1860s (due mainly to poor time coordination) the railroads introduced the concept of coordinated railroad (or railway) time.  It was the railroads that gave us the time zones (EST, CST, MST, etc.) we use today!

The railroads knew that for all this to work they needed to precisely synchronize time between stations. They adopted an ingenious solution that remained in use for over 100 years. Using the time signal service of the US Naval Observatory, time signals were send down the telegraph lines to allow station masters to synchronize their local station clocks. For the first time the US had a coordinated time system. For the first time someone in Denver could look at their watch and know precisely, in Denver time, when their aunt in Boston would be sitting down to dinner. It did not take long for the railroad time management standard to become the defacto national time management standard. It simply made good sense and brought order out of chaos.

The railroad industry's demand for accurate and synchronized time spurred an interesting development in watch making - the railroad watch. Since time synchronization was absolutely essential to railroad management and safety it was imperative that all railroad line personnel (station managers, supervisors, conductors, engineers, etc.) carry time pieces that met a certain standard for accuracy and reliability. This requirement triggered the production of some of the most accurate mechanical time pieces ever developed. My Grandfather Winterberg was a maintenance supervisor on the Erie RR in Buffalo, New York during the early 1900s and carried an Illinois Bunn Special. My mother used to reminisce about watching her father wind the watch every night before going to bed and going with her mother to a jeweler in downtown Buffalo to have the watch checked and adjusted (a regular requirement imposed by the railroad). That very watch sits proudly on my mantle today, ticking away merrily almost 90 years after it left the factory.

The movement of a Bunn Special railroad watch.
Not mine, but very similar.  The movements of these watches
are absolutely stunning examples of early 20th Century
industrial design and execution.

The Digitization of Time

Let's skip forward a bit. By the late 1950s America had 'jet age fever'; the WWII generation and very early Baby Boomers were fascinated by the promises that the new electronics industry offered. The potential of the new science of electrical miniaturization seemed limitless.  Computers that could fit under a desk, TV sets that used fewer vacuum tubes, pocket transistor radios that received AM and FM. Why, someone was even talking about using microwaves to cook food! Wow! In 1960 the Bulova watch company jumped into the market with the Accutron line of watches and they were an immediate hit. Here was the first consumer grade watch that was fully electronic. The Accutron made use of tuning fork technology to generate the time signal and it proved that fully electronic watches were not just technologically feasible but that they were accurate, practical and that there was more than enough pent up consumer demand to make them profitable.

The other impact of the Accutron and all similar designs was that consumer-grade electronic watches could now be made that met or surpassed the accuracy of high end mechanical chronometers.  For the first time ever the low level account executive wearing his Accutron to the company Christmas party could know precisely what the time was with as much confidence as the Senior VP wearing his Rolex Oyster.  Accurate and precise time keeping had been brought to the great, unwashed masses!

Workers of the world, rejoice!  You can now time the start of the Jackie Gleason Show with the same precision as your bourgeois oppressors in the executive wash room!

Let's pause for the 'so-what' factor here. So the low level account executive now has a relatively inexpensive watch that offers the same accuracy as the Senior VP's high end mechanical chronometer.  So what? Well, the 'so what' is really the understanding that inexpensive, high accuracy time keeping is about to be unleashed on the consumer in ways he or she could never predict. The Accutron watch was just the first manifestation of that trend.

Let's also pause to consider just what we are talking about when discussing accuracy. There are several accuracy standards in the watch and clock making industry, but let's use the most common and best understood: the Swiss COSC certification standard. The COSC standard for chronometer movements states that a mechanical movement can lose no more than 4 seconds per day or gain no more than 6 seconds per day over a 10 day test period. Keep these numbers in mind as we move forward.

The mechanical tuning fork design of the Accutron design was good, but was ripe for improvement.  Nine years after the Accutron's debut Seiko introduced the technology that would revolutionize the time keeping industry - the quartz watch.  The quartz watch follows the Accutron concept in that it uses an element oscillating (vibrating) at a known frequency to regulate the time signal.  In the case of the quartz watch that element is the quartz crystal.  The Japanese talent for miniaturization and integration meant that the basic quartz movement quickly found it's way into a broad variety of watches and other time keeping and time control devices.  The physical size and power requirements of the quartz time movement went down and the accuracy improved. The Japanese electronics industry cleverly leveraged it's lead and expertise in quartz watch movement technology into a multi-industry colossus and Japanese companies like Seiko and Casio continue to dominate the worldwide digital watch markets.

The Seiko Astron, the world's
first quartz wristwatch

Now let's take a look at those COSC standards I mentioned earlier.  The demand for mechanical 'certified Swiss chronometer' watch movements goes up year after year.  The market for high end mechanical watches is virtually insatiable.  Manufacturers like Rolex and Omega grind out watch movements by the thousands every year.  Each movement is tested by the Swiss COSC organization and those that pass receive an official Swiss chronometer certificate.  The problem is, the COSC accuracy standard in today's terms really isn't all that strict.  Remember, to receive a certificate a mechanical movement may not gain more than 6 seconds per day, or lose more than 4 seconds per day.  The average quartz watch from a reputable manufacturer easily beats the COSC mechanical chronometer standard.  I have a $29 Timex quartz watch that has lost roughly 1.5 seconds over the past 10 days.  That's a 0.15 second per day loss.

[The Swiss COSC organization does have a quartz chronometer standard that is quite rigorous and any consumer-grade quartz watch would find it tough to meet the standard.  We are talking accuracies in the neighborhood of a few seconds per year vs. a few seconds per month with consumer grade watches.  Astounding accuracies by any measure, but right now we are discussing run-of-the-mill quartz movement accuracies vs. mechanical chronometers.]

Watch enthusiasts will scream that I'm ignoring a LOT that is related to quartz movement accuracy and stability, and they are right to criticize.  However, the point here is not that a cheap quartz watch can beat a high end Omega or Rolex, but that technology brings increasingly accurate time keeping to the consumer at lower and lower prices.

Today a consumer can walk into just about any watch retailer and for less than $100 purchase a quartz watch that beats a Swiss chronometer.  Now that is progress!

The lowly G-Shock beats the Rolex?
You bet!  In accuracy, that is.

The Sky Is (Not) The Limit


As you can tell, I think quartz watches are 'da-bomb'; precise, rugged little time keepers that truly take a lickin' and keep on tickin' (props to John Cameron Swayze).  But accurate time doesn't stop with the oscillating quartz crystal.  Time and technology march on and today the average consumer has newer, even more accurate time options.

I began this blog post with the discussion of how time and the concepts of time have fundamentally changed human culture and behavior.  Well, current and emerging technologies are poised to have an even greater impact on how time influences our lives.

Everybody knows that atomic clocks are as good as it gets for accuracy.

The first word is GPS - Global Positioning System.   (OK, three words, but who's counting).

The second word is embedded, as in embedded (or integrated) technologies.

Let's start with GPS.  Everyone knows GPS is 'those navigation satellites'.  GPS is what your Garmin uses to fix your position.  What most people don't understand is that the GPS system uses the concept of time shift to calculate position.  The GPS satellite broadcasts it's position and precise time.  Your GPS unit receives that signal and calculates the time shift from when the satellite sent the signal to when it was received.  Knowing that the signal travels at the speed of light, your receiver can calculate where it is in relation to the satellite (just remember, you receiver needs the signals from three different satellites to fix your position).

To calculate an accurate time shift you need highly accurate and precise clocks at both ends - in the GPS satellites and in the receiver.  Each GPS satellite carries three or four atomic clocks accurate to about 50 nanoseconds (that's 0.0000000050 seconds!).  But clearly we can't stuff an atomic clock into each GPS receiver.  This is one of the neat tricks of the GPS system.  Since your GPS unit receives the time signal from the atomic clock in the satellite and it knows that signal is traveling at the speed of light and your unit is receiving the time signals from multiple satellites which allows it to average out error, with a cute bit of programming your GPS receiver is transformed into a 'slave' atomic clock.  This is how every single GPS receiver works.

A GPS satellite.  There are always 24 in orbit providing
worldwide coverage 24/7.  Each satellite carries four atomic clocks.

Accurate time tracking and synchronization is the fundamental principle behind GPS. Every GPS receiver tracks, manages and calculates time to atomic clock accuracy and precision!

Businesses and services that used to rely on expensive atomic clocks for accurate time measurement now instead use the GPS time signal.  For example:

• Did you know that there is a GPS receiver on top of virtually all cell phone towers in the US? No, the tower owners don't want to track the location of their towers in case they get stolen (ha, ha), but the owners are after that highly precise and accurate time signal.  Precise time management is how cellular systems handle the transfer of a phone call from one cell tower to another. As you cruise up the interstate yakking on your cell phone your call is being automatically transfered from one cell tower to the next and the synchronization of that transfer is managed using the highly precise GPS time signal.

• Computer networks that require highly precise time synchronization use GPS receivers as their time signal source (rather than the network time protocol servers).

• Secure radio networks use the highly accurate and precise GPS time signal to manage 'frequency hopping' for all radios in the network, reducing interference and increasing security.

The next innovation is integration.  Manufacturers are making GPS receiver 'chips' that are incredibly small. How small? Check this out:

iPhone 3G main board

This is the main circuit board from an iPhone 3G.  Circled in yellow is the GPS receiver chip.  That chip is less than 4mm x 4mm!  GPS chips are now built into virtually all smartphones and are being embedded in laptop computers, PDAs, tablet computers, personal training devices and a whole host of consumer electronics that are designed for use out of doors.  Unfortunately so far this integration only takes advantage of the GPS location capabilities, not time tracking and synchronization.

This brings us to close to the end of our journey through the history of consumer time.  With the advent of board-level integration of GPS in consumer devices the market is poised to take the next leap in time measurement for the common man - atomic clock quality time in the hand or on the wrist!

However, two simple developments need to take place.

The first is the use of the GPS time signal to update the internal clocks of consumer grade GPS receivers.  All GPS receivers have an internal clock or, for board mounted chips, receive a time signal from another timing device on the circuit board.  The internal clock maintains basic system time when the receiver is powered down and, in most cases, drives the time display on the device.  As silly as it sounds, most consumer grade GPS devices do not use the GPS time signal to continuously update the internal quartz clock!  For dedicated GPS units the system may do a clock synchronization when it is turned on and first achieves GPS lock, but from there the quartz clock may drift out of sync.  For embedded systems (like the iPhone GPS chip seen above) the device only uses the GPS time signal to calculate position.  The device firmware does not allow the GPS time signal to update the system clock (a shame, because the iPhone's internal clock is notoriously inaccurate).  While most users don't really care about atomic clock accuracy, it is a shame to not take full advantage of that exquisite atomic clock signal coming from the satellites.

Next is the integration of GPS receivers into consumer grade wrist watches.  Manufacturers like Garmin and Suunto currently integrate GPS into their watches, but these are purpose built devices designed for specific functions like sports training or wilderness hiking.  They are not general use watches.  What watch manufacturers need to do is integrate GPS into the watch specifically for time synchronization.  Make the technology invisible to the consumer - all he or she needs or wants to know is that the watch updates itself whenever it is outdoors and it's really, really accurate!  The technology is already there - Casio and others make extensive lines of watches that sync nightly with the time signal broadcasts in the US, Japan, Europe and China.  While this is a neat (and useful) trick, the concept is somewhat flawed  because the signals are available in only limited areas and they are easily masked or disrupted.  Since these watches already contain a radio receiver and antenna system to pick up the broadcast signals; swapping a radio receiver/antenna system for a GPS receiver/antenna system should be a fairly simple feat.  With GPS the synchronization signals are available worldwide 24/7.

Technology is on the cusp of putting atomic clock-quality time in the wristwatch of the common man.  We are almost there.  Do we need that level of accuracy or precision to guide our common daily tasks?  No, of course not.  Should we push to achieve it?  Of course!  The technology is available, proven and cheap.

So come on Casio!  Get to work on it.  I want my watch by Christmas!

_____________________________________________________

Thanks for hanging with me, dear reader!  Before I close let me clear a few things up.

First, I'm not trashing today's mechanical watches.  From an aesthetic point of view the mechanical watch has a heart and soul that the digital watch utterly lacks.  I love mechanical watches (and own my fair share).  They are wonderful time pieces that continue to please.

Next, there are a number of ways to make quartz movements inherently stable and extremely accurate, but those methods only seem to be used on high end watches and chronometers because each unit needs to be individually calibrated and adjusted.  It is actually easier for a manufacturer like Casio to build a watch using a consumer grade (but still quite accurate) quartz movement and off-load the synchronization task to an external service like the WWV time signal out of Fort Collins, CO.  A slick and cheap trick that actually works!

And last, when I started writing this post over a day ago I wasn't really sure where I'd go with it.  I know I wandered around a bit, but my research has taken me from the history of timekeeping to the concepts of industrial time management to the development of electronic watches to the exploding field of GPS time synchronization.  It has been an interesting and educational experience and I hope you've learned something along with me.

Thanks!

Brian

A Little Something for Shawn

My son-in-law Shawn is a police officer on one of the local departments.  He's got an interest in history and all things law enforcement, so I figure he'll enjoy this:

LAPD Police Academy - 1955

These guys all look like cast extras from that great old TV show Adam-12.  Clean cut young American boys, white, black, hispanic.  This was back when LAPD was a force to be reckoned with and the officer was the physical manifestation of the power and authority the LAPD carried and carefully wielded.  Back when the police officer was someone you knew, trusted and looked up to (and I still do).

Good stuff!

Who Knew Bill Clinton Was Advising Venezuelan Politicians?

Politician holds breast implant raffle to fund campaign

Sorry, I couldn't resist.