Entries by Ian Skellern

The Antikythera Mechanism: Predicting Astronomical Positions and Eclipses 2,000 Years Ago (Video)

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The Antikythera mechanism is an Ancient Greek orrery over 2,000 years old. It is the oldest known example of an analog computer and was used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. Spencer Connor is an engineer who decided to make a modernized reproduction of the Antikythera mechanism. In this video, he explains just how special the intricate clockwork was for its day, and just how complex it is to track the obits of our moon and the planets around the sun.

Watches & Wonders 2023 Round Table: What We Liked and Didn’t Like at the World’s Biggest Watch Fair

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Watches and Wonders 2023 ran from Monday, March 27 to Saturday, April 1 at Palexpo in Geneva and was open to the public on the 1st and 2nd of April. It attracted a record 43,000 visitors! That’s nearly double last year’s 22,000 visitors, largely thanks to the opening up of China and Asian countries after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Quill & Pad team was there, and we sat down after the show to discuss what we liked and didn’t like about the 2023 fair.

How To Make Gold: All The Gold On Earth Came From A Big Bang (Not That One) In Outer Space – Reprise

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The most common choice for classic dress watches has to be gold, but have you ever wondered where that gold originally came from? And by “originally” Ian Skellern isn’t referring to a gold mine on earth but the original source of the gold before it even arrived on our planet. Spoiler alert: it involves an explosion, a very big explosion!

De Bethune DB28: How I Launched It, Why I Bought It, And Why It’s The Perfect ‘One Watch’ – Reprise

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De Bethune celebrated the tenth anniversary of its groundbreaking DB28 in 2020 and, as Ian Skellern’s relationship with the model goes back the full decade, it seemed an appropriate time for him to share the story of how he came to launch the DB28, own a DB28, and what he thinks of the DB28 after wearing one regularly for 10 years.

Send Us Your Recommendations And Suggestions Of Watches To Nominate For The 2023 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG)

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As GPHG Academy members, GaryG, Joshua Munchow, and Ian Skellern have been asked to nominate watches for consideration in the 2023 GPHG. And while they spend much of our lives immersed in the world of watches, they don’t know of everything out there and there may well be, and are likely to be, gems that they are not aware of. So please send us your suggestions and recommendations for watches in the 15 categories listed.

10 Astronomical Complications That Have Not Been Invented As Suggested By ChatGPT: I Thought That A ‘Time Dilation Monitor’ Has Promise, But May Require Quantum Entanglement

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Open AI’s ChatGPT is many a lot of news and headlines recently, so Ian Skellern thought to see if this powerful technology could advance horology by asking it to, “Give him 10 astronomical complications for wristwatches that have not been invented yet.” This is what it suggested . . .

Burgess Clock B Is The World’s Most Precise Pendulum Clock And Is Made To A 250-Year-Old Design By John Harrison, Longitude Prize Winner And Inventor Of The Marine Chronometer – Reprise

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Two-hundred fifty years ago, Longitude Prize-winning clockmaker John Harrison made clocks losing just one second per month. But that wasn’t enough for him: in his later life, Harrison claimed that he could make a wall clock with a then-unheard-of-precision of just one second over 100 days! And 250 years later, it turns out he was right.