New Story: Timekeeping, monastic orders, measurement standards and Equestria · 12:46am Feb 1st, 2015
I have, at last, uploaded the first three chapters of my new story Time on Their Hooves, now awaiting approval by moderators. This is the big one (by my standards). The final version will probably be around 30,000 words.
This started off as an idea I had after visiting NPL—the lab which, together with NIST and others, maintains the network of atomic clocks which keep our servers running to time. On the train home, it occurred to me that there must be an equivalent measurement standards laboratory in Equestria, in order to tell Celestia when she should raise the sun. I starting drafting a short blog-post-story on atomic clocks. It then occurred to me that a much more interesting question was how did Equestria function before the invention of accurate clocks? In our world, until the 1950s and the adoption of the atomic standard, all clocks were ultimately set by the position of the sun. But that wouldn’t work if the position of the sun was just down to Celestia.
The more I thought about this, the more rich story ideas I developed. My research took me back to the early water clocks built in European abbeys in the middle ages. It became clear that such a story would have to be set many years before the time of Twilight and friends. This was a challenge, as with only two cannon characters (Celestia and Luna), it would need an unprecedented amount of world building. I created the Order of the Time Turners—my secular pony version of a medieval European monastic order. But medieval monasteries can be rather austere places, so I brought in the Cutie Mark Crusaders to liven things up a bit.
The next four chapters exist in draft form (I had to write the entire thing to figure out some of the details in the first chapters), but I still need to write some scenes and edit it. I will try to post a new chapter every few weeks, but it all depends on how much time I have.
And then write a strongly-worded memo when she's late, again. That's the third time this week!
Hmm. So much for getting productive work done tonight.
This is indeed, the big one!
But certainly the time at which Celestia raises and sets the sun will change dependent upon the date whereas the time system will remain constant?
I suppose it doesn't matter, as long as someone is keeping track of the actual time the sun will rise everyday. But that was honestly the first thing to run through my head.
Stonehenge came before Egyption time keeping, the stones were used to align the sun with the horizon for given dates, and so if it moved at a steady rate, which the stones could be used as shadow markers, would make sure different seasons had different day lengths?
When you get to water clocks, you are starting to get very close to Gooper class computational machines.
Huh, I'd taken the lazy way out and come to assume that Celestia can "feel" the sun seeking its natural rate of revolution -- she just needs to give it a "kick" at the dawn to keep it moving along a pre-existing path. I like this idea though.
I'm picturing Celestia convinced everypony to just set clocks by measuring the position of the sun, because if she needs a break or wants to sleep in she can just fudge the sun's position and tell everypony their clocks are off. Then somepony invents an accurate water clock and she can't have the occasional two-hour lunch anymore!