North Coast Imports, Inc.

From CBS News : The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "supermoon," will light up the night sky this weekend, but there's more to this lunar delight than meets the eye. On Sunday, June 23, at 7 a.m. EDT, the moon will arrive at perigee -- the point in its orbit its orbit bringing it closest to Earth), a distance of 221,824 miles. Now the moon typically reaches perigee once each month (and on some occasions twice), with their respective distances to Earth varying by 3 percent. But Sunday's lunar perigee will be the moon's closest to Earth of 2013. And 32 minutes later, the moon will officially turn full. The close timing of the moon's perigee and its full phase are what will bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event popularly defined by some as a "supermoon." So, be sure to check out the moon Sunday night, particularly at Moonrise or Moonset , when it will look the biggest. It's also a great time to set your...

I love Dug North's Blog . In case you don't already follow it, here are some noteworthy recent posts - for lovers of clocks and mechanical automata. Here's a beautiful and artistic piece from Levi van Veluw An analog clock in a digital world : This eye-boggling piece was recently featured in Clocks Magazine . Another book for your library... The mechanical clock, at least in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with its rational design and regular running, demonstrated an orderliness lacking in almost every aspect of life at that time. The clock came to offer an explanation for the mysterious workings of the cosmos: living creatures were in fact automata, and the universe itself was an enormous clockwork... Another great clockwork sculpture: There is truly some fascinating and beautiful stuff out there.  Follow this blog and Dug's blog for constant updates on the world of clockwork art!

It turns out there is an antique replica  (PDF) in Sydney ! Made in 1887. [via Kugelbahn ]

Great article in The NY Times : When it comes to profit and satisfaction, craft business is showing how American manufacturing can compete in the global economy. Many of the manufacturers who are thriving in the United States (they exist, I swear!) have done so by avoiding direct competition with low-cost commodity producers in low-wage nations. Instead, they have scrutinized the market and created customized products for less price-sensitive customers. Facebook and Apple, Starbucks and the Boston Beer Company (which makes Sam Adams lager) show that people who identify and meet untapped needs can create thousands of jobs and billions in wealth. As our economy recovers, there will be nearly infinite ways to meet custom needs at premium prices. Meanwhile, the idea (or at least the hope) is that as China and other emerging nations develop, the United States can stay on the profitable forefront, delivering specific high-tech parts to their factories and the latest upmarket foods to thei...

From Wikipedia : Sidereal time /saɪˈdɪəriəl/ is a time-keeping system astronomers use to keep track of the direction to point their telescopes to view a given star in the night sky. Briefly, a sidereal day is a "time scale that is based on the Earth's rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars."[1] From a given observation point, a star found at one location in the sky will be found at nearly the same location on another night at the same sidereal time. This is similar to how the time kept by a sundial can be used to find the location of the Sun. Just as the Sun and Moon appear to rise in the east and set in the west, so do the stars. Both solar time and sidereal time make use of the regularity of the Earth's rotation about its polar axis, solar time following the Sun while sidereal time roughly follows the stars. More exactly, sidereal time follows the vernal equinox, which is not quite fixed among the stars; Precession and nutation shift the equinox sl...

I finally had a chance to see the movie " Hugo " which is a film adaptation of Brian Selznick's book - which we've had on our reading list here for a long time. Best Movie Of All Time? Probably not, but definitely worth the watch (pun intended) for any clock nuts (and Clockworkpunks)! I loved the shots of Hugo's dad working on the two Orrerys. Did you see our NEW Orrery by the way?

“This machine is so much of an ORRERY, as is sufficient to shew [sic] the different lengths of days and nights, the vicissitudes of the seasons, the retrograde motion of the nodes of the Moon’s orbit, the direct motion of the apogeal point of her orbit, and the months in which the Sun and Moon must be eclipsed.” - James Ferguson, 1764 This is an interpretation of an orrery built by the Scottish Astronomer James Ferguson in 1750. The original does not survive, but there is much information about it in Ferguson's writings. We've posted about Ferguson and his Orrery before , and you can read more information about it at our /museum page. Watch this space! And you'll see a lot more about these fascinating little devices.

The clock tower seems to be modeled after the Prague Clock. [via Automaton Blog ]

James Ferguson (1710-1776) is known for designing orreries , or mechanical models of the Solar System. He was greatly admired by our national hero, and contemporary Thomas Jefferson and the staff at Monticello recently completed a beautiful reproduction of one of Ferguson's models. Check out our /museum pages for more information on the history of timekeeping, and similar mechanics. Check out more information on the great Monticello Blog! [Thanks to Charles Morrill.]

Here's a fantastic video of the 600th anniversary of the Prague Astronomical clock. From The Long Now Blog : BB reader Kerray says, “The people who worked on it are themacula.com, duber.cz and michalkotek.com, and the projection itself was done by avmedia.cz. Four months of work, 5000×1200 resolution, 2x Christie 18K HD projectors.” . Fantastic! This is a must see. There are all kinds of symbolic visuals on the passage of time. The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo .

From the “Chefs d’œuvre de l’Horlogerie Française ”, an historic collection of 12 unique clocks made between 1770 and 1851, from the private collection of Italian connoisseur Auzano Musa. This exhibition ran last year, 19 January to 6 February, 2009. Fascinating stuff, curator François-Paul Journe "believes that contemporary watchmaking must take into account the history of horological science while he creates his watches of exception. His insistence on uncompromising integrity in the realisation of innovative pieces and his daily commitment to defending the fundamental values of haute horology make him a link between the golden age of horological science and contemporary watchmaking." Lepine Astronomic Regulator Signed Lepine, Clockmaker to the King, Paris circa 1813. Astronomic Regulator of the “reversed Y” type with multiple indications. From top to bottom: hours of sunrise and sunset; hours, minutes and seconds, equation of time; full perpetual calendar, moon phases; zod...

From Officine Panerai : The exhibition "Galileo's Telescope - The Instrument that Changed the World", created by the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence and sponsored by Officine Panerai, is open from October 10th, 2009 to January 17th, 2010. Galileo's telescopes are housed in the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. The instrument on show in Stockholm is displayed for the first time outside Italy. The exhibition consists of six sections featuring beautifully crafted replicas of some of the instruments housed in the Museo di Storia della Scienza as well as important documentation and a significant selection of visual material, included extraordinary unpublished photographs taken through Galileo's telescope. The show also includes the extraordinary "Jupiterium ", expressly conceived and realized by Officine Panerai for the exhibition, displays the movements of the Sun, of Jupiter and his moons through a unique, mechanical scale mode...

I found some great pictures of a handmade Ferguson's Orrery from Makezine Designed circa 1750, the core of the mechanism depends on gears of differing ratios to illustrate the movement of the moon's nodes and apogee as the earth revolves around the sun. It can be used to illustrate many things, including eclipses." Jim further states he was inspired by Ian Coote, see Ian's page about the orrery here. [via Makezine , via Tina Buescher ] We have offered a few different Orrery clocks in our collection in the past. Each of them are works of art with limited availability. Be sure to watch this space so you know when we have another one available!

Here's an interesting article from the Long Now Blog . John Goodman is an engineer that admires intuition, a reluctant artist who enjoys elegant approximations. His best known creation, The Annosphere , was recently showcased at the Cambridge Science Festival in Massachusetts, where he lives and works. The Annosphere is emblematic of what Mr. Goodman calls an intuitive grasp of time – time that is told by instinct, season and cultural benchmark, rather than being parceled out in minutes and seconds. He tells an illustrative story: Once, in a hotel in Europe, he noticed that the shower knob was demarcated in degree readings. He got to musing on the fact that he had no idea, in degrees, how hot he liked his shower. “The shower had degree readings on the knob, but who knows the exact temperature they like their shower? The right way to set a shower is where it’s comfortable, the right way to measure time is the same.” From the Annosphere website : Time goes both too slowly and too qui...

New subscribers to the North Coast Imports blog may notice that we post a lot on our blog about pieces that we find interesting... and not available commercially. Here's a great project by Sean Gallagher that we found on the web and had to tell you about. We've had a few clocks available in the past with astronomical features. For example, we've had a few hand-made Orrery's made in England. Stay in touch, and we will most likely have more in the future.