Time Out of Joint
We're surrounded by appliances that tell us the time: VCRs, stereos, ovens, clock radios, etc. Unfortunately, the times displayed often get out of touch with reality.
Power outages will leave appliances flashing 12:00 (or 0:00). And switching to/from daylight saving can be a pain twice a year. A third problem is that the timing mechanisms in the devices have varying degrees of accuracy. So from time to time you will have to go around setting the correct time on various appliances.
Battery backups help solve the power outage problem. But batteries eventually go flat and cost money to replace. And they won't help much if you want to totally power down appliances to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After all these years, and the production of millions of appliances, you'd think manufacturers could have come up with a solution. Why haven't they taken some cues from the computer and telecommunication industries, which make use of time services and protocols (e.g. Network Time Protocol) to allow automatic time synchronisation. Appliance manufacturers could add some simple circuitry to perform a similar function over power lines. The cost of the circuitry would eventually become negligible thanks to economies of scale. In fact, manufacturers could save money by removing batteries and other parts.
Of course, this solution would require power companies to transmit a time signal over the power lines. Surely this couldn't be a huge cost? Telephone companies transmit the time and date as part of Caller ID information.
PS I don't claim to have come up with the phrase "time out of joint". Philip K. Dick used it for the title of a novel, and William Shakespeare used it in Hamlet.
Power outages will leave appliances flashing 12:00 (or 0:00). And switching to/from daylight saving can be a pain twice a year. A third problem is that the timing mechanisms in the devices have varying degrees of accuracy. So from time to time you will have to go around setting the correct time on various appliances.
Battery backups help solve the power outage problem. But batteries eventually go flat and cost money to replace. And they won't help much if you want to totally power down appliances to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After all these years, and the production of millions of appliances, you'd think manufacturers could have come up with a solution. Why haven't they taken some cues from the computer and telecommunication industries, which make use of time services and protocols (e.g. Network Time Protocol) to allow automatic time synchronisation. Appliance manufacturers could add some simple circuitry to perform a similar function over power lines. The cost of the circuitry would eventually become negligible thanks to economies of scale. In fact, manufacturers could save money by removing batteries and other parts.
Of course, this solution would require power companies to transmit a time signal over the power lines. Surely this couldn't be a huge cost? Telephone companies transmit the time and date as part of Caller ID information.
PS I don't claim to have come up with the phrase "time out of joint". Philip K. Dick used it for the title of a novel, and William Shakespeare used it in Hamlet.
Labels: inefficiency, technology
posted by Bruno at 8:35 PM [permalink]
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