Yes, learned some brand new things about common events! Very cool, there's something about tech at a convergence of aesthetics, science and history that is really awesome.
I did wonder about one bit though, which really was driven home by their speculation about trying to do it mechanically at the end:
>"However, as a fan of astronomical complications, I can't help but wonder if this sort of complication couldn't be realized in a mechanical wristwatch or pocket watch."
Does what the Apple Watch is doing require GPS? I sort of assumed that if it's showing true noon/midnight and so on it must also be taking into account the watch's physical location and calculating with that. As someone who knows little about mechanical watches, can this be done without that, or there mechanical complications that can take a manual location adjustment as an input or the like? It's amazing to consider the kinds of creative and impressive engineering and construction that has gone into mechanical computation though. On almost the polar opposite scale, it somehow reminds me a bit of the Ars article last year mechanical analog computers for warships ( https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/gears... ).
Yes, it would require either a GPS or a manual setting of the location. I also imagine it's going to be incredibly difficult to process the kinds of trigonometric formulae that length-of-day and twilight calculations involve, using only mechanical gears.
On the other hand, Japanese watchmakers don't seem to be particularly averse to mixing analog with digital, mechanical with electronic. So I wouldn't be surprised if Citizen, for example, came up with a hybrid GPS/mechanical watch that does exactly what the Apple Watch does while the Swiss toil for decades trying to build a purely mechanical version.
I did wonder about one bit though, which really was driven home by their speculation about trying to do it mechanically at the end:
>"However, as a fan of astronomical complications, I can't help but wonder if this sort of complication couldn't be realized in a mechanical wristwatch or pocket watch."
Does what the Apple Watch is doing require GPS? I sort of assumed that if it's showing true noon/midnight and so on it must also be taking into account the watch's physical location and calculating with that. As someone who knows little about mechanical watches, can this be done without that, or there mechanical complications that can take a manual location adjustment as an input or the like? It's amazing to consider the kinds of creative and impressive engineering and construction that has gone into mechanical computation though. On almost the polar opposite scale, it somehow reminds me a bit of the Ars article last year mechanical analog computers for warships ( https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/gears... ).