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Flip Clock
A flip clock (also known as a "flap clock") is an electromechanical, Digital clock, digital timekeeping device which displays the time through a split-flap display, where numbers are revealed by flipping or rotating a series of plates or leaves. History The flip clock was invented in Germany by in 1890. Unlike the typical Analog clock, analog clocks at the time, Pallweber's design used double-sided metal tablets suspended in drums: a minute drum with 60 tablets and an hour drum with 24 tablets. Each tablet displayed the upper half of a number on one side and the lower half of the next number on the reverse, so that when one tablet stood upright and the next hung down, they formed a complete number visible through a reading window. Production of Pallweber's flip clock design began around 1894 at Lenzkirch Clock Factory. The flip clock saw further development by American inventor Eugene L. Fitch, who patented the Plato clock in 1902. After a varied career including work as a Mercha ...
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Jewel Bearing
A jewel bearing is a plain bearing in which a metal spindle (tool), spindle turns in a gemstone, jewel-lined pivot hole. The hole is typically shaped like a torus and is slightly larger than the shaft diameter. The jewels are typically made from the mineral corundum, usually either synthetic sapphire or Ruby#Synthesis and imitation, synthetic ruby. Jewel bearings are used in precision instruments where low friction, long life, and dimensional accuracy are important. Their main use is in mechanical watches. History Jewel bearings were invented in 1704 for use in watches by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Peter Debaufre, and Jacob Debaufre, who received an English patent for the idea. Originally natural jewels were used, such as diamond, sapphire, ruby, and garnet. In 1902, Verneuil process, a process to make synthetic sapphire and ruby (crystalline aluminium oxide, also known as corundum) was invented by Auguste Verneuil, making jewelled bearings much cheaper. Today most jewelled ...
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Twemco
Twemco is a manufacturer of flip clocks from Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor .... The company emerged in 1956 and became a fully-fledged clockmaker by 1968. The factory shop is located in the Prince Edward area. Twemco is the world's leading manufacturer of automatic flip clocks and its products became a symbol of Hong Kong precision engineering during the mid-20th century. The company claims to have sold almost 1 million clocks. The design of Twemco's desk clocks resembles that of the world's first flip clock, the Cifra 3 designed in Italy in 1965. In Hong Kong, Twemco clocks are a fixture in banks, government buildings and offices. This has led the clocks to become associated with the film aesthetic of Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai. References {{R ...
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Cifra 3
The Cifra 3 is a digital flip clock manufactured by Solari di Udine, S.p.A., Italy. It was designed by Italian architect (1923–2003) in 1965, with contributions from Belgian inventor John Myer and typography design by Massimo Vignelli. The Cifra 3 is widely considered a masterpiece of industrial design, using a split-flap display to display hours and minutes. The Cifra 3 was included in the 2004 "Humble Masterpieces" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and is in the museum's permanent collection. Many other museums include the clock in their collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Science Museum (London), Science Museum in London and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. History Gino Valle's relationship with the Solari company began in 1954 with the design of the Cifra 5 electromechanical ''digit-snap'' clock (patented in 1957), consisting of 4 vertical pallets of 10 numbers each making up all the hours. The Cifra 5 clock was the pro ...
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Warszawa Centralna Railway Station
Warszawa Centralna (official Polish name since 2019 Dworzec Centralny im. Stanisława Moniuszki), in English known as Warsaw Central Station, is the primary railway station in Warsaw, Poland. Completed in 1975, the station is located on the Warsaw Cross-City Line and features four underground island Railway platform, platforms with eight tracks in total. It is served by the long-distance domestic and international trains of PKP Intercity and Polregio as well as some of the regional trains operated by Koleje Mazowieckie. Adjacent to the north side of the building is a bus station that serves as the transport hub, central hub for night bus lines, and Złote Tarasy shopping center. History Warsaw Central was constructed as a flagship project of the Polish People's Republic during the 1970s economic boom, and was intended to replace the inadequate and obsolete Warszawa Główna railway station. The station's design was innovative, but construction was plagued by continuous altera ...
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Orly Airport
Paris Orly Airport (, ) is one of two international airports serving Paris, France, the other one being Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). It is located partially in Orly and partially in Villeneuve-le-Roi, south of Paris. It serves as a secondary hub for domestic and overseas territories flights of Air France and as the homebase for Transavia France. Flights operate to destinations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and North America. Before the opening of CDG in 1974, Orly was the main airport of Paris. Even with the shift of most international traffic to CDG, Orly remains the busiest French airport for domestic traffic and the second busiest French airport overall in passenger traffic, with 33,123,027 passengers in 2024. Location Orly Airport covers of land. The airport area, including terminals and runways, spans over two '' départements'' and seven '' communes'': * Essonne ''département'': ''communes'' of Paray-Vieille-Poste (West T ...
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Solari Di Udine
Solari di Udine SpA is an Italian company that designs and manufactures public information displays, historically split-flap displays. The company was founded in 1725 in Udine, a small city in northeastern Italy. Initially, the company specialized in clocks for towers. It began working with designer Gino Valle after World War II, and developed signs with four flaps, each with ten digits, to display the time. The company eventually designed displays with 40 flaps, with the help of Belgian inventor John Myer. The new displays could include numbers and letters, allowing for a much wider use. The company's Cifra 5 clock was awarded the Compasso d'Oro in 1956. In this year, Solari sold its first moving sign to Liege railway station in Belgium. It subsequently sold thousands to airports and train stations. There is no known record of surviving Solari split-flap displays, though hundreds have been replaced with more modern displays across the world. Specific displays *For its conversi ...
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Firenze Santa Maria Novella Railway Station
Firenze Santa Maria Novella (in English Florence Santa Maria Novella) or Stazione di Santa Maria Novella is the main railway station in Florence, Italy. The station is used by 59 million people every year and is one of the busiest in Italy. It is at the northern end of the Florence–Rome high-speed railway line ''Direttissima'', which was completed on 26 May 1992 and the southern end of the Bologna–Florence railway line, opened on 22 April 1934. A new high speed line to Bologna opened on 13 December 2009. The station is also used by regional trains on lines connecting to: Pisa, Livorno (Leopolda railway); Lucca, Viareggio (Viareggio–Florence railway); Bologna (Bologna–Florence railway) and Faenza (Faentina railway). History The station was inaugurated on 3 February 1848 to serve the railway to Pistoia and Pisa, and was initially called ''Maria Antonia'' (from the name of the railway, named in honour of Princess Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies); it was much closer ...
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Daylight Saving Time
Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, Summer time in Europe, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the longer daylight available during summer so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The standard implementation of DST is to set clocks forward by one hour in spring (season), spring or late winter, and to set clocks back by one hour to standard time in the autumn (or ''fall'' in North American English, hence the mnemonic: "spring forward and fall back"). Overview As of 2023, around 34 percent of the world's countries use DST. Some countries observe it only in some regions. In Canada, all of Yukon Time Zone, Yukon, most of Time in Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, and parts of Nunavut, Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec do not ...
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24-hour Clock
The modern 24-hour clock is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours (and minutes) passed since midnight, from to , with as an option to indicate the end of the day. This system, as opposed to the 12-hour clock, is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, and is used by the international standard ISO 8601. A number of countries, particularly English speaking, use the 12-hour clock, or a mixture of the 24- and 12-hour time systems. In countries where the 12-hour clock is dominant, some professions prefer to use the 24-hour clock. For example, in the practice of medicine, the 24-hour clock is generally used in documentation of care as it prevents any ambiguity as to when events occurred in a patient's medical history. Description A time of day is written in the 24-hour notation in the form hh:mm (for example 01:23) or hh:mm:ss (for example, 01:23:45), where h ...
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12-hour Clock
The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin , translating to "before midday") and p.m. (from Latin , translating to "after midday"). Each period consists of 12 hours numbered: 12 (acting as 0), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. The 12-hour clock has been developed since the second millennium BC and reached its modern form in the 16th century. The 12-hour time convention is common in several English-speaking nations and former British Empire, British colonies, as well as a few other countries. In English-speaking countries: "12 p.m." usually indicates noon, while "12 a.m." means midnight, but the reverse convention has also been used (see #Confusion at noon and midnight, § Confusion at noon and midnight). "Noon" and "midnight" are unambiguous. History and use The natural day-and-night division of a calendar day forms the fundamental basis as to why each day is split ...
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Split-flap Display
A split-flap display, or sometimes simply a flap display, is a digital electromechanical display device that presents changeable alphanumeric text, and occasionally fixed graphics. They were (from the 1960s to 1990s) commonly used as public transport timetables in airports and railway stations. They were often called Solari boards after the Italian display manufacturer Solari di Udine, or, in Central European countries, Pragotron after the Czech manufacturer. Split-flap displays were once commonly used in consumer digital clocks known as flip clocks. Design Each character position or graphic position has a collection of flaps on which characters or graphics are painted or silkscreened. Larger flaps can display whole words, while smaller flaps display individual characters. The flaps are precisely flipped to display the desired character or graphic. These devices typically show departure or arrival information in railway stations and airports, where they serve as flight ...
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