Related papers: Tower bells and time zones, a history of synchroni…
The paper presents the results of an ambient vibration monitoring campaign conducted on so-called Clock Tower (Torre delle Ore), one the best known and most visited monuments in the historic centre of Lucca. The vibrations of the tower were…
In 1626, the Venetian physician Santorio Santorio published the details of his pulsilogium, a stop clock that could accurately measure one's pulse rate. He applied Galileo Galilei's insights that the frequency of a pendulum's oscillation is…
Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) ordered Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) to build a Meridian Line. Bianchini was the Secretary of the Commission for the Calendar. He chose the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli because of the stability of its…
The first idea of establishing a public astronomical observatory in Florence, Capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, dates to the mid of the 18th century. Initially, the use of a low building on a high ground was proposed, and the hill of…
Among the first devices used to measure the time we find the sundials and the water-clocks, as told by Vitruvius in his book on the Architecture. The sundials work because of the shadows cast by a rod or pole, the gnomon, on their…
The page written by the astronomer Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) and containing the data of the 1701 winter solstice observed at Santa Maria degli Angeli is presented for the first time in figure 2 and widely discussed along this paper.…
Before atomic timekeeping, clocks were set to the skies. But starting in 1972, radio signals began broadcasting atomic seconds and leap seconds have occasionally been added to that stream of atomic seconds to keep the signals synchronized…
The great meridian line in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome was built in 1701/1702 with the scope of measuring the obliquity of the Earth's orbit in the following eight centuries, upon the will of Pope Clement XI. During the…
In the nineteenth century, the Netherlands quickly adopted the time ball -- a British innovation for maritime chronometer calibration -- in its main naval ports (Nieuwediep/Den Helder, Vlissingen, Hellevoetsluis) and commercial centres…
Observation of auroras at low latitudes is an extremely rare event typically associated with major magnetic storms due to intense Earth-directed Coronal Mass Ejections. Since these energetic events represent one of the most important…
Amaldi et al. in 1981 reported two key discoveries from the Frascati and Rome gravitational wave cryogenic bar detectors: (a) Rome events delayed by within a few seconds to tens of seconds from the Frascati events, and (b) the Frascati…
The 1703 was the first year of full operation of the meridian line in the Basilica of St. Maria degli Angeli in Rome. The instants of solstices and equinoxes, the \textit{Anni Cardines}, obtained by comparing transit timings of Sun and…
It is usually stated in the literature that Geneva was the first city to adopt mean solar time, in 1780, followed by London (or the whole of England) in 1792, Berlin in 1810 and Paris in 1816. In this short paper I will partially revise…
The synchronization of two pendulum clocks hanging from a wall was first observed by Huygens during the XVII century. This type of synchronization is observed in other areas, and is fundamentally different from the problem of two clocks…
The Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) has produced a large volume of high-quality lunar laser ranging (LLR) data since it began operating in 2006. For most of this period, APOLLO has relied on a…
In the nineteenth century, the Dutch established time signals in their Atlantic colonies to synchronise maritime navigation with European standards. In Paramaribo (Suriname), a sophisticated sequence of apparatus -- including time balls,…
The transmission time of an electromagnetic signal in the vicinity of the earth is calculated to c-2 and contains an orbital Sagnac term. On earth, the synchronisation of the Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB) can be realised by atomic…
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, through its Legacy Survey of Space and Time, will soon start producing 10 million alerts on transient astronomical objects per night. Due to logistics and bandwidth, alerts will not be dispatched directly to…
The Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) began millimeter-precision ranging to the Moon in 2006. Until now, a comprehensive validation of APOLLO system range accuracy has not been possible because of…
The meridian line traced by Egnazio Danti in the Torre dei Venti in Vatican demostrated the need of the Gregorian Reformation of the Calendar. A review on this instrument is presented, along with the astrometric recognition. This meridian…