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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Comparing Watch
From: Bill Murdoch
Date: 2000 Feb 04, 6:28 PM
From: Bill Murdoch
Date: 2000 Feb 04, 6:28 PM
On page 324 (figure 18-9) of Richard Hobbs, "Marine Navigation", 4th edition is a picture of a "comparing watch". It is a mechanical stopwatch-like watch. There are the usual hour, minute, and second hands of a pocket watch and in addition an extra second hand mounted on the center shaft of the watch. According to the text, pushing the button atop the watch stops the extra second hand so that the exact time that the button was pressed can be read. The watch is especially useful in timing sextant sights. I have never seen a watch like this before. Several years ago I looked without success for a digital stopwatch which would indicate GMT hours, minutes, and seconds and the display of which could be stopped, read, and resumed. I never found one. I resorted to taking a $6 digital stopwatch from Wal Mart and modifying it to make it something like the watch I wanted. I put the it into the stopwatch mode and started it timing at midnight GMT. Then I removed the plastic button that changes the mode of the watch and the plastic button that starts and stops the stopwatch to keep from accidentally pressing them. That left the lap button. When pressed once the watch freezes. When presses a second time the watch resumes displaying the time since midnight in hh:mm:ss format. That works all right, but I can only correct any watch error at GMT midnight. Does anyone know of a currently manufactured "comparing watch" either mechanical like the one in the figure or a digital ? Bil Murdoch Kingsport, TN
