Five Things

[Matt]

We know they counted to sixty on their hands In duodecimal but used a decimal system when writing!

Make a fist. Open the nearest finger and and run your thumb down the joints, counting them - 1,2,3. Then the next finger and so on. That gives you twelve. Keep track of the twelves by simply folding fingers in the other hand. The choice not to use finger tips as well or not to count the same way on both is almost certainly, as you noted, about the utility of twelve as the base over the other possible options.

While the Babylonians were the first that we know for sure why they did it, we also know that the Sumerians and Akkadians did too and there is some evidence that it was used far earlier. We know that, but not why.

[tribe125]

• If the design of the Rolex Daytona Leopard looks a little unlikely, it may be because CEO Patrick Heiniger asked his designers to come up with a watch suitable for his long-time girlfriend Nina Stevens. Whether or not the design incorporates a satirical element is not recorded.
  
  
• Abraham-Louis Breguet wasn’t a fan of decorating movements for the sake of it. Finishing surfaces to reduce the risk of oxidation was another matter, but some modern enthusiasts might say that the world’s greatest watchmaker wasn’t giving them enough for their money. Decoration as a mark of distinction didn’t do it for Breguet, but functional beauty did.
  
  
• Wealthy patrons kept giving Mozart watches when what he wanted was money. Writing to his father whilst on tour, he said: “It was just as I had expected. No money, but a fine gold watch. What one needs on a journey is money, and let me tell you, I now have five watches. I am therefore seriously thinking of having an additional watch pocket on each leg of my trousers, so that when I visit some great lord, I shall wear both watches (which is in any case now the ‘mode’) so that it will not occur to him to present me with another one.”
  
  
• The blueprints of Zenith’s most notable chronometer movement found their way to the Tschistopolsky watch factory in Russia - and then the Russians improved it. The movement was the caliber 135, the first wristwatch movement to be approved as a chronometer. Introduced in 1948, it was a serial winner of chronometer prizes. The Russian counterpart was the Vostok 2809 found in the ‘Precision’ model. Why the Russians went to so much trouble isn’t entirely clear. Maybe it was a means of stimulating development in the Russian watchmaking industry. The Russian chronometers cost too much to make and were only produced for around five years.
  
  
• Seiko’s Micro Artist Studio in Shiojiri has a picture of Philippe Dufour on the wall. In more ways than one, Dufour acted as a finishing school for the watchmakers that established the studio. Dufour shared his techniques, including the use of gentian wood for polishing, which he cut from a local forest. The Seiko watchmakers took some gentian branches back to Japan, and eventually an equivalent species was found at Hokkaido University, which had been growing it for medical research.

[Raza]

• There weren’t always sixty minutes in an hour. Early clocks divided the hour into two, three, four and sometimes twelve parts, but not sixty. In fact, most people had no conception of minutes until they appeared on clocks in the late sixteenth century. It was the Babylonians who started to divide things into sixty and we can’t ask them why. Probably, it was because sixty (like twelve) is particularly useful for expressing fractions. ‘Minute’ comes from pars minuta prima, meaning ‘first small part’. ‘Second’ comes from pars minuta secunda, meaning ‘second small part’. Some languages preserve a third subdivision of seconds into a further sixty parts (e.g. tercja in Polish). So hidden within a second is a terce.

Interesting. I occasionally wonder who decided on sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour. Turns out it's the Babylonians.

[mlcor]

I would dearly loved to have met Mozart. He always sounds like the liveliest bad boy musician ever.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tribe125]

I would dearly loved to have met Mozart. He always sounds like the liveliest bad boy musician ever.

I’d like to see him in a jazz trio.

‘Mozart Plays Monk’ could be a great album.

[Raza]

I would dearly loved to have met Mozart. He always sounds like the liveliest bad boy musician ever.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ever?

[mlcor]

Ever?

Given the times in which he lived, possibly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Raza]

Given the times in which he lived, possibly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

How many Rolls Royces did he drive into swimming pools?

[mlcor]

None of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a carriage or two.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[is that my watch]

was he thou ? or was a line said by beethoven taken out of context ? ... when beethoven was talking of his Requiem something like too wild and terrible was't it ? they are saying now most of it was made up his wild boy image ?? years after his death ?