Hasta La Gadget!

Vintage oscilloscopes are amazing devices. It turns out that they make great clocks too. It was around 1960, when Aaron’s grandfather purchased an Heathkit OR-1 oscilloscope, which he passed down in his family in excellent condition. Aaron later used his electronic hacking skills to turn the oscilloscope into a clock.

Turning an oscilloscope into a clock is no easy task. It takes some interesting control circuitry to get its display to show anything other than waveforms. So Aaron created a custom control board that can draw any shape on the CRT screen using just circles. It also squashes circles to draw a line, and cuts the beam entirely to slice a circle in half.

The end result looks spectacular and I bet you want one now. So do I. The good news is that Aaron sells custom-built oscilloscope clocks, as well as circuit boards for you to convert your own scope with. For more information, check out his website, Oscilloclock.com.

[via Hack A Day]

I don’t think we’ve ever seen a wall clock in the TARDIS, which is odd since it is a time machine after all. If the Doctor ever did hang up a clock, it would probably look something like this Timey Wimey TARDIS Wall Clock from UnicornEmpirePrints.

Naturally, the Timey Wimey Tardis Clock is made in the Gallifreyan style. Of course, Time Lords don’t need any numbers to tell the time.

This wooden clock is painted TARDIS Blue, with a metallic gold backing and is about 8″ tall. It’s selling for $46(USD), which is a whole lot less than buying an entire TARDIS.

The Doctor really might want to think about getting a clock, for the sake of his companions if nothing else. It gets confusing going to the past, the future, sideways…

[via Neatorama]

Calling a clock the most accurate ever may sound like hyperbole, but physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado have built a pair of devices that can claim that title. The team used an optical lattice to address an issue that plagues atomic clockmakers: constantly shifting frequencies that negatively impact the accuracy of their measurements. For example, a single second can be defined by the frequency of light emitted by an atom when electrons jump from one state to the next, but those frequencies change as the atom moves. The optical lattice essentially suspends atoms to minimize the Doppler effect produced by that movement. By combining the lattice with the element ytterbium, the group was able to create a device that measures time with a precision of one part in 10¹⁸. To put that into perspective, Andrew Ludlow, one of the paper’s authors, said, “A measurement at the 10¹⁸ fractional level is equivalent to specifying the age of the known universe to a precision of less than one second.” To read more about the team’s work, you can find the full PDF at the source.

Filed under: Science, Alt

Comments

Via: MIT Technology Review, Gizmodo

Source: Cornell University Library (PDF)

So, you’ve made a fortune, bought a sports team, own a spaceship and drive a neon pink Batmobile. If you were worrying that there were no more extravagant purchases to be made, you were wrong. Luxury timepiece maker Hoptroff has just teased details of its latest method of parting you from your money — a pocket watch with its own atomic clock. Rather than your average radio-recieving watch, the Hoptroff No. 10 will apparently contain a Symmetricom caesium gas chamber (pictured after the break), developed in partnership with the Department of Defense. The watch will be available in November and, if you get lost at sea with just a sextant, will double as a marine navigation device. Priced at £50,000 ($78,000), only twelve are to be produced, which you’ll be able to buy provided you can pass the security checks necessary to carry “sensitive materials.”

Filed under: Wearables

Comments

You might not have heard of BERG before, but they are an UK-based design consultancy whose claim to fame would be their innovative creation, The Little Printer. Well, staying put in a single place or resting on your laurels is never the way to go if you want to maintain a competitive edge. This could very well be why the BERG Cuckoo Clock has proven itself to be a new as well as highly original concept by working alongside the hugely influential social media network known as Twitter.

#FLOCK would come across as a limited edition wirelessly connected clock that will rely on the BERG Cloud development kit which will react to the activity of an individual Twitter account. The clock is said to be awarded to ten different brands or companies who have managed to show just how creative they can be when it comes to using Twitter, by offering a physical presence to their virtual activity. Comprising of a quartet of houses, three of them will hold brightly colored birds (fake birds, of course, and we aren’t even talking about stuffed ones) that react to Twitter notifications including a new follower, a retweet or an @message. The reactions vary in terms of popping out differently, making this a truly unique cuckoo clock. Twitter-enabled devices can be commercially produced or built from ground up via DIY just in case you were wondering.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Officially Licensed Iron Man Mouse Comes With Light Up Eyes, Arc Reactor Not Available, Navevo Unveils ProNav HGV Cyclist Software To Warn Drivers Of Cyclist Traffic,