Innovated over four decades ago, by an American inventor, the tide clock was a necessarily significant maritime gadget in the ancient times. As its name pinpoints, the equipment is utilized to calculate the stipulated time difference between the occurrences of wave surges.
What is tide clock?
A tide clock is a specially designed clock that keeps track of the Moon’s apparent motion around the Earth. A tide clock is divided into two roughly 6 hour tidal periods that shows the average length of time between high and low tides in a semi-diurnal tide region, such as most areas of the Atlantic Ocean.
How Tide clock works?
The tide clock’s mechanism is based on the moon’s pull on the tidal movements of the sea and depends thoroughly on adjusting the clock to the moon’s lunation cycle. In order to operate the watch seafarers thus, first need to set it to the first occurring high tidal action in a particular lunation cycle. Depending on this fine-tuning, calculated results about the forthcoming tidal occurrence are able to be obtained.
Similarly the tide clock also needs to be fine-tuned in case of voyaging in different water geographies. This helps seafarers to remove any inaccuracies in terms of tidal calculations, irrespective of the actual position of the vessel. Just like any other electronic gadget, the tide clock is battery operated and requires no other complicated gadgetries to support its upkeep.
However, unlike the other clocks and watch mechanisms, which are divided into four quarters such as three, six, nine and twelve with other numerals between one and 11 placed at a regular interval, the tide watch has the two tidal notations placed opposite on its face. Between these two tidal notations – low tide on the lower end of the watch face and high tide on the upper face – are numerals counting the over 12-and-a-half hour time separating the two tidal action.
The accuracy of the tide watches has helped in the formulation of the tidal tables that prognosticate statistical data about tidal action in the coming years. Such tidal tables have become technology-driven successors of the originally pioneered tide watch thus helping it to maintain a steady tandem with developments in engineering sciences.
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Source: marineinsight
