Aspirational Clocks

This excerpt from a piece in the One Day in the City: Part I exhibition at University College London caught my eye and my imagination:

1913 – the Post Office was sets up [sic] a cheaper version of its electrical time service, known as ‘synchronisation’. A newspaper article noted that this, “it might be thought, would risk the business of the lady who calls at the Observatory once a week for the right time and then carries it around to her clients. But apparently there is no danger of this . Miss Belville … cuts time down to finer distinction than any synchronized clock can aspire to.”

I love the idea of clocks aspiring to be more and of time being something you can carry. I think there’s some interesting leverage in infusing our technology with dreams and also of giving the intangible mass and physical form.

Miss Belville – Ruth – was one of the Greenwich Time Ladies. Also fascinating and a good reminder that tech can slip.

Future archaeology

In around 3,000 B.C. a henge was built, consisting of a circular array of 14 standing stones, surrounded by a ditch about 30 metres in diameter and 5 metres broad, possibly also including a causeway across it where the burial chamber now stands. It is not known what the purpose of this structure was, though as with all henges possible theories include a seasonal calendar, a temple to the heavens, ancestor worship or some other religious practice of which we have no conception.Description of the Bryn Celli Ddu prehistoric burial site

Henge and chamber on the Highgate / Balsall Heath border

Is it possible that this arrangement of henge-like mounds and central chamber could be excavated 5000 years from now? What hypotheses would the future archaeologists postulate about its function?