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For your entertainment, the Prague Astronomical Clock
And the Wikipedia entry.
The whole clock, though to be honest the Wikipedia photo is better:
Whoever shot the Wikipedia photo had much better alignment. Our tour group arrived much too close to noon and getting anywhere near the clock wasn't easy. At least my photo gives you a better sense of scale.
The clock, also called the Orloj, was first put in place in 1410! It is the oldest astronomical clock in the world that still works. The lower dial is really a astrological dial though, it shows the calendar in the first quarter or so of Scorpio. The photo was shot on the 26th of June 2015 if you care to check. Let's face it, a scientific understanding of astronomy in 1410 just wasn't that strong - this clock was built almost 200 years before the birth of Galileo who is considered the father of modern astronomy - most astronomy in the 1400s was geocentric, heliocentrism didn't really take off untilCopperknickersCopernicus, who was born some 50 years or more after this clock was built.
Closeups and more wordiness from me under the cut. And as always, clicken to embiggen.
Closer look of the whole thing:
Unfortunately I didn't get perfect coverage with my photos for a stitch, but I thought it better to leave some blank areas. What I'm curous about is there's clearly a door on the left side of the top dial, and a bricked-in area on the right side. So was there a door, and it was removed for some reason? The clock was badly damaged during some fighting in WW II, so it's a possibility.
The four upper figures are animated and have limited movement on the hour. They show figures that were despised at the time: Vanity, a Miser or Userer, Death, and Lust or Earthly Pleasure. The two windows above slide open on the hour and show a cavalcade of the apostles stream past the windows.
The clock face shows the earth and the phase of the moon. According to Wikipedia, "These numbers indicate Old Czech Time (or Italian hours), with 24 indicating the time of sunset, which varies during the year from as early as 16:00 in winter to 20:16 in summer. This ring moves back and forth during the year to coincide with the time of sunset."
Wikipedia goes on to say: "The golden Sun moves around the zodiacal circle, thus showing its position on the ecliptic. The sun is attached to an arm with a golden hand, and together they show the time in three different ways:
The position of the golden hand over the Roman numerals on the background indicates the time in local Prague time.
The position of the Sun over the curved golden lines indicates the time in unequal hours.
The position of the golden hand over the outer ring indicates the hours passed after sunset in Old Czech Time.
Additionally, the distance of the Sun from the center of the dial shows the time of sunrise and sunset. The Sun and its hand are on the 365-tooth gear inside the machine."
These photos were shot at 11:58am Prague time, so if you can figure out how to read it, more power to ya!
Lower face:
The outer ring of the lower dial that counts the days of the year was added some time later. That's two independent rings, the inner showing the zodiac and presumably the planting/harvesting seasons, the outer the days of the year. I really like the angel to the left - she's left-handed! I'm a little perplexed why they'd use a sinister angel.
It turns out that for the last couple of years that the clock was running on an electric mechanism while the original works were overhauled last year, but now the original guts are back in place.
Now, to be honest, while this is a cool clock to see and has some very interesting history behind it, it is definitely not interesting to hear. It's just a single tone BONG BONG BONG. If you want to hear something cool, you want to hear this....
This is the Dresden Porcelain Carillon. Near Dresden is a place called Meissen, a world-famous porcelain works. The story that we were told was that the King of Saxony received Chinese guests who showed him Chinese-made porcelain, but wouldn't tell him how it was made. So he set craftsmen to figure it out, and they did. And they've continued the tradition. The carillon is built in to the Zwinger, which was part of the old city's original wall and fortifications, it now holds an Old Master's gallery and a fine porcelain collection. I don't know why, I guess it isn't singularly important enough, but it doesn't have a Wikipedia entry of its own! Regardless, if you search YouTube for Dresden Zwinger Glockenspiel, you'll find some amazing videos. The tune it plays is changed quarterly, and it plays the longest tune at 10:20AM! If you show up at noon expecting a grand performance like an American clock might do, you're bound for disappointment.
Anyway, these porcelain bells sound absolutely incredible. It is simply an amazing performance. Dresden is about 2 hours north of Prague by car or train, so if you find yourself in one or the other, GO FOR IT! Dresden is a place that I really want to spend a couple of weeks in with little or no agenda, we were there for about three days when the ship was immobilized due to low water levels in the Elbe: shuckie-darns! We had to amuse ourselves for two extra days in an amazing city and had our hotel and meal service stuck there with us!
The whole clock, though to be honest the Wikipedia photo is better:
Whoever shot the Wikipedia photo had much better alignment. Our tour group arrived much too close to noon and getting anywhere near the clock wasn't easy. At least my photo gives you a better sense of scale.
The clock, also called the Orloj, was first put in place in 1410! It is the oldest astronomical clock in the world that still works. The lower dial is really a astrological dial though, it shows the calendar in the first quarter or so of Scorpio. The photo was shot on the 26th of June 2015 if you care to check. Let's face it, a scientific understanding of astronomy in 1410 just wasn't that strong - this clock was built almost 200 years before the birth of Galileo who is considered the father of modern astronomy - most astronomy in the 1400s was geocentric, heliocentrism didn't really take off until
Closeups and more wordiness from me under the cut. And as always, clicken to embiggen.
Closer look of the whole thing:
Unfortunately I didn't get perfect coverage with my photos for a stitch, but I thought it better to leave some blank areas. What I'm curous about is there's clearly a door on the left side of the top dial, and a bricked-in area on the right side. So was there a door, and it was removed for some reason? The clock was badly damaged during some fighting in WW II, so it's a possibility.
The four upper figures are animated and have limited movement on the hour. They show figures that were despised at the time: Vanity, a Miser or Userer, Death, and Lust or Earthly Pleasure. The two windows above slide open on the hour and show a cavalcade of the apostles stream past the windows.
The clock face shows the earth and the phase of the moon. According to Wikipedia, "These numbers indicate Old Czech Time (or Italian hours), with 24 indicating the time of sunset, which varies during the year from as early as 16:00 in winter to 20:16 in summer. This ring moves back and forth during the year to coincide with the time of sunset."
Wikipedia goes on to say: "The golden Sun moves around the zodiacal circle, thus showing its position on the ecliptic. The sun is attached to an arm with a golden hand, and together they show the time in three different ways:
The position of the golden hand over the Roman numerals on the background indicates the time in local Prague time.
The position of the Sun over the curved golden lines indicates the time in unequal hours.
The position of the golden hand over the outer ring indicates the hours passed after sunset in Old Czech Time.
Additionally, the distance of the Sun from the center of the dial shows the time of sunrise and sunset. The Sun and its hand are on the 365-tooth gear inside the machine."
These photos were shot at 11:58am Prague time, so if you can figure out how to read it, more power to ya!
Lower face:
The outer ring of the lower dial that counts the days of the year was added some time later. That's two independent rings, the inner showing the zodiac and presumably the planting/harvesting seasons, the outer the days of the year. I really like the angel to the left - she's left-handed! I'm a little perplexed why they'd use a sinister angel.
It turns out that for the last couple of years that the clock was running on an electric mechanism while the original works were overhauled last year, but now the original guts are back in place.
Now, to be honest, while this is a cool clock to see and has some very interesting history behind it, it is definitely not interesting to hear. It's just a single tone BONG BONG BONG. If you want to hear something cool, you want to hear this....
This is the Dresden Porcelain Carillon. Near Dresden is a place called Meissen, a world-famous porcelain works. The story that we were told was that the King of Saxony received Chinese guests who showed him Chinese-made porcelain, but wouldn't tell him how it was made. So he set craftsmen to figure it out, and they did. And they've continued the tradition. The carillon is built in to the Zwinger, which was part of the old city's original wall and fortifications, it now holds an Old Master's gallery and a fine porcelain collection. I don't know why, I guess it isn't singularly important enough, but it doesn't have a Wikipedia entry of its own! Regardless, if you search YouTube for Dresden Zwinger Glockenspiel, you'll find some amazing videos. The tune it plays is changed quarterly, and it plays the longest tune at 10:20AM! If you show up at noon expecting a grand performance like an American clock might do, you're bound for disappointment.
Anyway, these porcelain bells sound absolutely incredible. It is simply an amazing performance. Dresden is about 2 hours north of Prague by car or train, so if you find yourself in one or the other, GO FOR IT! Dresden is a place that I really want to spend a couple of weeks in with little or no agenda, we were there for about three days when the ship was immobilized due to low water levels in the Elbe: shuckie-darns! We had to amuse ourselves for two extra days in an amazing city and had our hotel and meal service stuck there with us!
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I was renaming all of my Prague files and decided to play with these a bit. Glad you enjoyed them! It's a cool thing that I'd never heard about before the trip and my wife telling me about it, and it is pretty cool.
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Just...wow.
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Cool place to visit, just sayin'. And nicely warm in the summer. Good beer and food, too.
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I want to say it's the Schengen Accords or something like that which eliminates internal borders once you've presented your passport to one EU member state.
The biggest hassle was reentering the USA in Newark! Definitely the slowest lines and processing, and worst looking airport that I've ever been in.
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The city fathers knew war == bad, and they moved the city archives, which contained all of the detailed blueprints, out of the city and hit them in caves or something. After the city was plastered, they had all of the plans and rebuilding was just a question of manpower and materials. Likewise, the statues on display at the Zwinger and elsewhere are copies: there's a vault under the city where the masters are in stable environments, every X years when one on display ages out from weathering and pollution, a new copy is made and the one on display is replaced.
THAT is city planning!
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Prague wasn't bad, I just wish American tobacco companies weren't trying to addict the rest of the world now that they're losing out here. My lungs can't handle a lot of smoke exposure, and there's a lot of smoking over there! But European tobacco is less offensive to me than American tobacco, doesn't have all the chemicals that we allow. Still, I wish there was less public smoking there.
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The only place in Europe that I've ever been was Iceland, and smoking wasn't tremendously common there. When I went to Australia, I was dismayed by the amount of smoking I encountered. I would suspect that Europeans are going to take up "vaping" fairly soon - it's just a much more polite way to ingest one's drug fumes. (It seems to me that most users of medical cannabis, like me, prefer vaping to smoking.)
Public smoking is worst in most of Asia - industrial coal smog is not the only source of air pollution in China.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
I believe I referenced it once in an astronomy presentation that I gave once upon a time.
For us, if we're ever allowed medical or recreational marijuana, it'll probably be edibles for us - we have fairly bad lungs.
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Edible cannabis products take a very long time to take effect, and they're rather awkward to titrate. But it's between a patient and their doctor, of course. (Back when I was a hippie, I had no problem setting the stuff on fire and sucking down the smoke, but that was the only thing I ever smoked. Now I'm much happier with the vaping process, which is a lot less harsh on the lungs and throat. It seems to be replacing smoking as the method of choice for nicotine addicts to get their fix.)
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What do you think Australopithecus used Uluru for? ;-) Get a lot of lift off that on warm days! The Greeks invented so much geometry that being good with gears strikes me as pretty complementary, they were pretty clever people. My brain goes tilt to think how accurately they worked out the diameter of the Earth!
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Steve Martin in his King Tut costume launching off the point....
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