This article is just going to lose me business or something bad but I just cant help myself and really enjoyed writing it. Please take it with a pinch of salt and I hope you enjoy it.
It is a privileged to be able to try. Thats why it is a betrayal of creation itself to give up. Progress is relative ,but trying is an on and off switch. So in this spirit I offer you my take on Aristotles metrics. While Aristotle chose his metrics as the key virtues, I choose mine to be in the “the condition of your clock”. This will be a new frontier in Horology as nobody has yet defined elements on the scale of nothing to perfection. All is work in progress so I am starting with the fundaments. Aristotle said the virtue of courage was defined in any given situation as the distance between cowardice and recklessness. This gives us a scale on which to project our own courage and therefore find it. On my condition metric I will therefore identify the best and the worst condition as a starting point.
Clock Level O Condition – The “Mary Rose” condition assessment.
“Sir, thank you for bringing your clock in. The good news is we wont be at this long. So lets speak to the condition of this. Imagine Henry 8ths flagship. Sailing from port on its maiden voyage. Perfection in presentation and presence. Listing lightly in a stiff breeze flying full colours. That was then. Now it is held together by fossilised coral that is in turn held together by a constant spray of salt water in its dark, cold , miserable wet dock. Nothing remains of the outer structure. It is a national lottery funded wreck pointlessly sucking money from the reservoir of academia. No further scientific or archaeological data can be gleaned from it. It is useless. It is a pile of detritus which in many ways insults the craftsmen who created it. I am convinced all that dust that came up from the ocean floor when they raised it was the ships carpentry crew spinning in their sandy graves. I think you know why I am telling you about the Mary Rose. I mean, thanks for bringing the clock in. It IS interesting. F*%& off OH MY GOD DID I SAY THAT? Im so sorry, Its been a long first ten minutes of the morning and I forgot myself. Ha ha. Sorry.” [Sound of crying, footsteps, door slam]
Clock Level 1 Condition – The “Holy Trinity” condition assessment.
Sir, thank you for mostly lovely lovely fawning thank you sir may I touch your boot. We regularly do major important science engineering on impossibly rare makers clocks like your Tompion. The fact that yours was found by the cleaner in the basement of the British museum after recent London underground work exposed a 300 year old clock chamber could be considered good fortune. What is more surprising is the freak build up of geoloically produced nitrogen in the never opened temperature regulated hidden vault. Only a time warp could have done a better job of preservation than the inert nitrogen gas that has prevented even one molecular oxidation bond forming on the 6.02 x 10 exp23 x 1000 x 10 atoms of metal present. Thats accurate assuming the clock is 10kg but that is hard to estimate as Tompion didnt do any other clocks in solid gold with rhodium accents. Nobody has yet identified Tompions first clock. This is it. Definitely. This is evidenced by T monogrammed intact red wax seal on the silk ribbon stylishly affixed to the waist of the case. Everything is in mint condition and the clock features every single design innovation he produced in his lifetime, but it seminal format. These modifications are technically an improvement on what they later evolved into. Its like finding a quantum computer invented by Issac newton. Fascinating. Lets have a look in the case. It appears to be made entirely of Dinosaur Ivory. Well well, someone has left an old Japanese Katana in a WW2 USA transport corps bag. It says Honjō Masamune on it…..[later] A gold chalice you say? And it glows in the dark and has been in your family owned by the same great great great great great grandmother who is still alive since returning from Jerusalem in the 16tth Century? Interesting. Worthless. Ill spot you tenner for it.. take it before I change my mind.”
I tore that from my soul and am now empty. I will add to the middle ground in the metric next. Week. Maybe. If you need me to look at your Mary Rose or Holy Trinity please give me a call or whatsapp.
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