On 7/13/19, jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Time nuts indeed.

About 15 years ago, I read a biography of Alfred Loomis    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis    an extremely wealthy amateur scientist.  He was very instrumental in developing radar in America just before, and during WWII.  This was primarily done at MIT, in Building 20 (built supposedly for the duration of the war, plus 6 months, but in fact not demolished until about 1997.)   I frequently visited Building 20 while at MIT, because that was the location of MITERS (MIT Electronic Research Society, the student electronic club.).    It also housed TMRC (Tech Model Railroad Club) which I occasionally visited.

At one point, Loomis visited England and ordered three (3) "Shortt Clocks", the most precise mechanical pendulum clocks ever created.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt%E2%80%93Synchronome_clock

His choice to buy three of them, not one or two, showed that he was thinking ahead, and more important, THINKING.   Get one clock, and you know very little about its accuracy.  Get two clocks, and you only know how they differ, not which one is causing the difference.  Get three clocks, and you can begin to do serious work about learning how accurate your knowledge of their performance really is.

                    Jim Bell