William J. Polley

Assuming you have to do it yourself and without help and that the clock is on-time going into the change, assuming you can't stop the clock for much more than an hour (i.e., no stopping it at 2pm the day before), and assuming you have no camera, mirror, etc. to observe the clock from the controls, it seems to me that it is easier to "set the clock back" an hour than forward:

1) BACK: With stopwatch in hand, stop the clock and start the stopwatch. After an hour has elapsed, run the clock.

2) FORWARD: fast-forward the clock by a little more than an hour (which you have to go out to observe), then go in and stop the clock. Go out again to note the time on the clock. Go back in with a reference time-piece and run the clock when the reference timepiece catches up with the clock reading.

Is there an easier way to do #2 that does not involve 2 trips outside?

I suppose one could argue #2 is easier since #1 takes an hour and #2 should only take 5 or 10 minutes. But it depends on whether you want to take a 60minute coffee break or 2 round trip walks outside.

ErikR,

You are indeed correct that setting the clock forward is more difficult. As a practical matter, the number of trips outside wasn't a big issue as the clock controls were very close to the door and the door was right under the clock face. So we didn't worry about that. But yes, when I set the clock forward in the spring, I did pretty much what you describe.

Keep in mind, of course, that this is at 2am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning in a college dorm. A handful of RAs (and myself) were "on duty" to keep the peace in the overnight hours. Large quantities of cheap pizza and non-alcoholic beverages were consumed. As the saying goes, "a good time was had by all." Watching the clock hands spin around was a change of pace from the usual Saturday night routine.

I had one other thought.

Is it possible the fast-forward was at a well-controlled rate? Like say, 12 hours per hour? In which case you could fast-forward for exactly 5min and set the clock ahead one-hour.

Too much to hope for :-)

I doubt it. You're talking about a sweeping minute hand up on the 4th floor of a building. Hard to get an exact reading for doing something like that. Easier to have someone outside shout when to stop.

It is not THAT unlikely. I don't know much about clock-towers, but I know a few things about gears and motors. If the system is designed to run normally at a well-controlled rate (it's a clock!), then it is certainly possible that fast forward is simply a multiple of that rate.

For example, a cheap wall clock runs on the 60 Hz frequency of the main electrical lines. To fast forward such a clock, you could conceivably use a frequency doubler or quadrupler or whatever, and it would run fast but at a well-known rate.

If your clock tower has an electric motor driving a gear, then the electric motor must be designed to rotate proportionally to the 60 Hz power line frequency. So you could fast forward it by increaing the frequency. Or maybe it does fast-forward by switching a gear. If so, a higher gear would probably be a multiple of the normal gear.

Yes, I know how an electric clock works, but all I'm saying is that you'd have to make a number of careful observations to be able to figure out the multiple to the desired degree of accuracy. (It's an engineering stats problem at that point!)

I am totally on board with your desire to change this into an abstract engineering problem (it is an interesting thing to think about), and I totally agree with your conclusions! If I had to do this task alone and often, I would do exactly as you suggest! (In fact, though I don't recall our exact conversations at the time, I do seem to remember that my friends and I covered a lot of this ground as we watched the hands spin!)

But in reality, I did it twice a year with lots of people around who were interested in seeing it happen. Hence, walking outside to watch and having a buddy shout out exactly when to stop were practical solutions.