Berlin Clock

******* THE BERLIN CLOCK ******* by Röbbe Wünschiers *version 1.1* *** The Clock *** The Berlin-Uhr is a registered trademark by D. Binninger who invented it in the seventies. It was originally installed in 1975 at the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Due to technical problems and the running costs of roughly 5000 Euro the clock was switched off in 1995. One year later the clock was reinstalled close to the Europa Center in front of the tourist information and is presently sponsored by merchants within the Europa Center. *** The Principle *** The Berlin-Uhr is based on the principles of quantity didactics and with this its the first of its kind. The time is calculated by adding the lit rectangular lamps. The top lamp is blinking in the rhythm of the seconds. The upper row of four lamps represent 5 hours each. The four lamps in the row below indicate one full hour each. Three burning lamps in the first row and two in the second account for (5+5+5+1+1) 17 hours, which is 5pm. The third row of eleven tall lamps represent 5 minutes. In the original version of the clock the 3rd, 6th, and 9th are red colored indicating the quarter hours where as the other lamps are yellow. In the last row every lamp represents 1 minute. *** Replica *** I know only of one replica of the clock: it is run by a banking company in Oldenburg/Germany close to the Lamberti church. *** My Project *** Some 15 years ago or so I tried to build my own version of the clock using digital electronics with CMOS chips. The clock run well - except occasional miss ticks: for example at midnight, there was a strange ghost at work and the clock went wrong. I could not figure out the problem and dropped it after a while in favor of a other projects. So after that hard (-ware) way, the soft (-ware) way finally was fruitful with version 1.0. *** Installation *** The program comes zipped with two files. The file you just read (readme.txt) needs not to be on the Psion. The file berlin11.sis can be executed from the PC (if you have PsiWin) or from the Psion Series 5. It will create the folder berlin11 in the ...\apps\ folder. A program icon named either B-Uhr (German Psion) or B-Clock (English Psion) will then appear in the extras menu. *** Terms of usage *** Feel free to use and distribute the program when you agree to: *************************************************************************** ** not to sell it ** keep the package together ** ** tell me were you place it for download ** *************************************************************************** Any comments are welcome! I do not take any responsibility for the results of using the program, neither physically, nor mentally. Contact me: rw@biowasserstoff.de New versions can be found at http://members.tripod.de/roebbe/