High Horology: How Watchmaking Helped Me Understand Bitcoin

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This is an opinion editorial by Dr. Riste Simanjanowski, a tenured professor of public administration with California Baptist University.

Vinyl records should be obsolete, although Jack White, Ben Blackwell and Ben Swank third man records Really keep pressing.

Dedicated media channels like content creators teddy baldassareA YouTuber who reviews mostly analog wristwatches, similarly, shouldn’t reach 1 million subscribers.

White, Baldassare and many others continue to rage against a digitized world with grace and a cult following.

Bitcoin, being a digitized software protocol, implements one of the most elegant solutions to security in this vein – an offline, analog, seed phrase. In fact, many seed phrases are stored on pieces of paper, carved and/or stamped into pieces of metal or typed… with vintage typewriters.

Even Bitcoin Magazine, despite having a massive online presence, sells its physical publications.

The conforming aspect of humanity is not a trend – conformity defines us.

For many people, something deeper happens when they hold a record on a player. The act of moving a physical hand, with a delicate needle over pressed vinyl, and then hearing the scratches, pops, and subtle noises of the system at work isn’t hearing, it’s feeling.

Similarly, the physical act of manually winding a watch involves touch. The act of rotating the crown gives feedback to not only the fingers, but the ears as well. Some can even argue, the heart is engaged. In regards to wearing an automatic watch, some owners can “feel” the rotor within the micro-mechanical system as it spins on their wrist.

Impossible Correlations, Experiments and Errors

The oldest mechanical (automatic) clocks date back to the early 1500s. a round clock that, when manually wound, lasts for more than 16 hours.

piece reported to have been made by Horologist peter heinlein (a German watchmaker) was accurate to the nearest half-hour, for (patron) Philipp Melanchthon.

within 100 years, Galileo Galilei was toying with the concept of “pendulum clocks”; However, while Galileo’s sketches showed a keen interest in the potential of building a pendulum clock, he didn’t build one before his death,

Horologists are credited with developing the first pendulum clock Christiaan Huygens In the mid 1600s. Huygens’s earlier works had a perceived accuracy of approx. one minute per day, but iterations pushed the clockmaker toward an error of less than 10 seconds per day. Fast forward about 75 years or so, and clockmakers had refined the craft to an accuracy of plus or minus 1 second per day in the 1700s.

A fun experiment for readers if you want to understand Huygens’ physics: Make your own crude pendulum by attaching a weight to a string. Once the weight is hanging freely, hold the string in one hand and then use the other hand to pull the weight to one side, then release.

You’ll see the weight move from side to side… not very attractive, is it? But then, grab the weight and pull it from a greater distance and let go. Repeat from short distance.

Huygens is what you’ll find theorized and then proved, that the stored potential energy of the weight plays no part in the swinging of the pendulum—the time it takes for the pendulum to pass through the center is a constant; No matter how far you drop the pendulum.

Only The way to adjust the speed of the pendulum is to either increase or decrease the actual length of the string; A longer string length equals a slower pendulum rate (pulse); and a shorter length, thus having a faster pulse or tick as the weight swings back and forth.

This is, for all intents and purposes, how mechanical watches are adjusted, except without a wire, a small piece of metal (a spring) is wound around it. If a clock is running slow or fast, adjustments are made within the system. Not much has changed in the last 150 years. It is beautiful because it is simple.

I attribute my bitcoin discovery phase to the accuracy errors of mechanical timepieces. Initially, I believed that a new bitcoin block was created every 10 minutes; However, as I surrounded myself with more experienced community members, technical personnel, and cyberpunks, I learned that block times vary or “oscillate” between a few seconds to a few days’ deviation in some cases. The protocol automatically adjusts the length of the pendulum string based on the needs of the network.

The mechanical aspects of time divergence that Satoshi Nakamoto coded into bitcoin are, unlike watchmaking, features, not bugs.

Tik Tok, Next Clock

high horologyAlso referred to as the more precise, meticulous, and exceedingly time-consuming task of creating a bespoke, and in many instances, the most exceptionally accurate mechanical watch known to man, often with a blind eye to quartz, digital, solar or hybrid movements Let’s take

Although many may not realize it, a typical quartz Timex or Casio is More accurate than many high end mechanical watches, Additionally, some watch connoisseurs do not consider many of the “expensive” brands to be “high horology” because of their brand names. The devil is in the details.

Collectors, however, may consider an offering from a watchmaker they may never have heard of, assuming the horologist has created something remarkable, such as a quad-layer, guilloche resurrection The clock prototyped by Joshua Shapiro in Southern California.

Ironically, many watch collectors also usually have a $40 to $100 Casio G-Shock (or equivalent) wristwatch in their collection. There are many reasons for this, but really, different tasks require different tools.

In relation to bitcoin, BTC’s device is waiting to work, layer, and adopt. Bitcoin is both a higher horizon and $40 Casio. The application adapts depending on the user and network; But most importantly, to the developers who dedicate their lives to making the network better.

jewelry

When considering the number of gears, wheels, pinions, springs, etc. in a mechanical watch movement, a lot of friction is generated between the micro-metallic components, not unlike some friction within the BTC community.

for example, jewelry A mechanical watch may have what are commonly referred to as “bearings”. As such, a jewel does not represent “jewelry”, but rather a precision gem-bearing applied to reduce friction.

If you have any variation of a mechanical, automatic or modern self-winding watch, chances are there is a “jewel” number on the back of the watch.

Quartz timepieces may not have a single jewel in their mechanism, while others may have a handful.

Implementing a battery, generator, and capacitor into a quartz movement has reduced or eliminated the need for traditional “jewelry”.

most mechanical watches there are 17 gemsWhile more complicated watches are more applicable.

Initially, diamonds, rubies and sapphires were implemented as bearings in these complicated watches. Today, even the most famous watchmakers use synthetic sapphire or ruby,

In bitcoin, horology matters.

Whether one has caught the watch collecting bug or has zero knowledge of the place is irrelevant to the field of horology; Space moves on without them. The mechanics of automatic watches haven’t changed in hundreds of years and honestly, that’s probably why this field is so beloved.

Bitcoin is on the same trajectory.

While many believe that bitcoin is too complex to understand, these same critics use other technologies every day and the irony is that they can never articulate what the technology they use every day actually is. How does it work?

Some members of the same community view bitcoin as an antiquated technology; Everything revolves around perspective.

If you asked the majority of the population how a mechanical watch “tells time”, could they tell you? Even many watch collectors could not identify all the parts in a movement, and that is okay.

To adopt is to adopt.

With or without them, the bitcoin protocol continues to operate in much the same way.

My mechanical clock can sit quietly; However, once I pick it up and put it on my wrist, the other hand begins to sweep, and the inner workings come back to life.

Bitcoin in cold storage is like an automatic watch waiting to wear out.

Within the bitcoin community, there are friction points, not within the software, but within the community itself.

Jewels in the bitcoin community can exemplify friction-reducing individuals, programmers, node operators, and the like, who are often looked down upon at conferences, online, and in the real world.

Recently, some programmers have tried to create friction In Mechanics of the Bitcoin Protocol.

The friction reduction aspects (jewels) are appreciated by the bitcoin community but play an important role in the protocol.

I encourage the cyberpunk community to be on the lookout for continued attacks attempting to create friction within the protocol and to be prepared with additional jewels ready to deploy.

in previous articles and a Book, I hinted at the Quiet Bitcoin Community (QBC) and its importance; Maybe I should refer to them as “jewels” Moving on to our protocol.

Stay strong and keep up the good work – you are appreciated.

Author’s Note: Special thanks to Bitcoin Magazine, Peter Chavga and company; for Third Man Records, notably Jack White and his crew; For Dr. Minesinger, Dunbar, Sturges, George and Ardito for editing and feedback; And finally the team working with Teddy Baldassare — I’m looking at you John Stursa, thanks for the support.

This is a guest post by Dr. Riste Simanjnowski. The opinions expressed are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.