Probably my favorite object so far. What a clever way to record if the sun is shining or not... Focusing the light and burning paper. So simple and yet so brilliant!
No kidding! I would love to see it in person. I can appreciate how smart the original builder, Mr. Campbell was/is, and how simple and elegant the design is.
The station at Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in Boston, MA apparently has 120 years worth of sunshine data recordings using a Campbell-Stokes recorder, from 1889 to 2011, which has been digitised and analysed. Their original recorder was used from 1886 until the 1990's! That's wild!
@@PopeLando not true Manchester gets about 1,265 hours per year according to the met office, but it is incredible that it gets less sunshine than Edinburgh and Iceland.
"So how does your invention work?" "It starts numerous tiny fires throughout the day." "That sounds most dangerous!" "Oh no, they're scientific fires." "That's alright then."
It occurs to me that if it rains in the morning then the sun comes out there will be a period of time that you don't record as well because the paper is wet.
I didn't do the calculation, but I feel that the ernergy needed to boil out the water on the paper, is not that big compared to burning the paper. The beam is advancing very slowly, I feel that the inaccuracy would only amount in minutes (way bellow the precision of the instrument).
One of the best parts of a position I held for nearly 20 years as a wastewater treatment plant professional was the recording of the weather at the plant where I worked. Recording weather conditions including rainfall totals was just a small part of the daily duties were were required to log. We also were in charge for the recording of rainfall totals for the local yearly rain derby which was a charity contest to guess the yearly rainfall totals. Of course, the winners would get cash prizes for the closest guesses to the actual totals. I bought tickets every year faithfully, and never won a single dollar. Which shows that I could record the numbers just fine, but my prediction skills were sorely lacking.
As a Met Office employee, and having done some field observation work, I can tell you I had a hearty chuckle when I realised the packaging and handling labels they use for the archive instruments are the same as those we use for in-use instrumentation
From a quick search because I seem to recall seeing this in active use: In Denmark, the " Campbell-Stokes-solskinsmåler" (sunshine meter) was used by the national meteorology institute until 2001.
You could have mentioned that the axis of this device is set to be parallel to the axis of rotation of the earth around the sun, so it always hits the same line on the card.
I used this every day at High Level, Alberta during the 80's. Sometimes a pain to change the strips if the sun burned along most of its length and you broke them trying to extract the strip.
@@Nilguiri Well, it has to be made to tolerances similar to the lenses in eyeglasses. Since Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals in the 18th century, getting a proper finish would have been well understood, but probably very time consuming. The problem I see is getting a ball of glass that big without it cracking as it cooled. Possibly by cooling it very slowly, over a period of days or longer, you could get one made. Of course, if one did crack it could just be melted down and recast, which would help keep costs down a bit. Still, they were probably very expensive.
Spherical grinding is surprisingly simple, and absolutely wonderful. If you look into the methods of lapping and of telescope mirror grinding there's lots of lovely information
Would love to see more metrology gear and apparatus content on TH-cam! It’s awesome to see folks diving into metrology, test equipment, and stuff I deal with every day.
It's always fascinating to me to see how science was conducted in the past - before computer models, before weather satellites, before planes that could take one anywhere in the world within a day. I especially like seeing the instruments and understanding how they were / are used. Thanks for yet another amazing video.
As a child in the 1960s I was fascinated by one of these whenever we visited Mablethorpe - the tourist information office on the walk down to the beach always had one in their window (fortunately south facing and not overlooked). The charts they used were white rather than blue and I always suspected that they were impregnated with something so that the northern sun could always produce a trace, regardless of how weakly it was shining.
I would love one of these. Probably couldn’t afford it though. We get lots of sunshine here in the Canadian Prairies. Being so flat where I live we really can see 180 degrees.
From the early 1960s my family went to a place in north Wales and stayed in a guest house for a week over a few years. The house had one of these in the garden but it was about a third the size and recorded on tissue paper on which it just made brown burns in bright sun. Fascinated the hell out of me.
There is one of these situated in Skanör, the southern west most corner of Sweden. It's a very beautiful piece to look at in reality so if you're in the area, give it a visit!
I wonder how they delt with rain, that would make the paper not burn it seems.. maybe it was covered in a greenhouse or something, but in the picture it was out in the open, and also it seems that would mess up the measurements
You didn't say that there are several slots to slide the card in for Summer, Winter and the equinox seasons of Spring and Autumn. Also, the card is special. It is made for all stations in the world at one factory in France.
Nicely machined paper holder, too! Now let me enlighten you further, that in the 90's, IKEA "invented" a spherical vase which I kept on my living room table for vase purposes. Not living in London, the sun was out quite often. But after a while I noticed strange burn marks on some papers I also kept on the table. And one day, the tv remote was melted in one corder. This worried me quite a lot, because I had no idea how that could be, other than someone being careless with matches, and that would've been me, and I wasn't ;-). But sunny day, I smelled burnt paper and to my surprise caught the vase and the sun in action. There and then I learnt that a burning glass can also be spherical. (I didn't learn not to buy IDEA stuff, as I already knew that.)
In the '70's somebody bought for us a dandelion "clock" [1] encased in clear resin. It's a nice ornament, and sat on top of the television set [2], where on one or two particularly sunny days it melted a little curved track into the plastic TV top. After that, I moved it to somewhere shady. [1] i.e. the flower-head gone to seed, in case you didn't know [2] this was a long time ago, children, when TV equipment had width, and height..., and DEPTH !!
If you would like to come and see one still in use the head over to Lancaster University weather station. We have one, and we still send the cards to the met office.
The ‘Stokes’ part of Campbell-Stokes is the same Sir George Stokes who helped invent the Navier-Stokes equations, among other things. I guess he just liked being the latter part of hyphenated discoveries?
I remember seeing one at Oamaru airport in about 1982. (very small regional airport.. The flight service officer must have had the duty to change the charts at that timd)
Instead of paper with a binary light or no light. Could you make it some thicker material that can map sun intensity from the depth that gets burned away?
Maybe this is an urban legend, but when I was growing up in Eastbourne Sussex, UK, They were advertising the town as “The Sunshine Capital of the South Coast” and backing it up with numbers of sunshine hours compared with the other coastal towns. The rumour was that these sunshine measuring devices, which were all from Victorian times, were getting slowly opaque. It was rumoured that Eastbourne had bought a new one, and suddenly recorded more hours that all the neighbouring towns because of the shiny new glass ball. I still wonder if it was true. BTW, the paper arcs with the burn marks used to be proudly displayed in (I think) the railway station window.
Those strips look like they have been produced (with their markings and everything) using the photographic Cyanotype process (i.e. they are literal blueprints). Is that correct?
I wonder if they have to change the paper out if there's a rainstorm then the sun comes out? The wet paper wouldn't burn and could throw the measurement off by an hour or two. Maybe more if the rain comes and goes all day.
Crazy cuz I have a crystal ball and I just recently had the independent idea for this same invention. Also pleased to learn I can trust my intuition that it already exists
I accidentaly built one of these once when I set up a homemade camera with ultra slow cyanotype paper in my front garden for a couple of days. I ended up with a very dim image and a burnt streak where the sun had passed.
Apparently not and there isn't much use for that either as the sun will likely not shine then anyway. I guess people will wipe it down afterwards or it simply doesn't influence the recording much. The card I would assume to be protected.
I just wanted to find out what the weather was like on the day of my birth 11111952 and found the nearest weather station to me was 1934 to today was Manston in Kent. using a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder. Manston Location 632300E 166100N, Lat 51.346 Lon 1.337, 49m amsl
What an incredible instrument! I really enjoyed this.
Probably my favorite object so far. What a clever way to record if the sun is shining or not... Focusing the light and burning paper. So simple and yet so brilliant!
No kidding! I would love to see it in person. I can appreciate how smart the original builder, Mr. Campbell was/is, and how simple and elegant the design is.
The thrill of seeing comments from channels I love on channels I love.
The station at Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in Boston, MA apparently has 120 years worth of sunshine data recordings using a Campbell-Stokes recorder, from 1889 to 2011, which has been digitised and analysed. Their original recorder was used from 1886 until the 1990's! That's wild!
The weather station here in Manchester has 125 years worth of sunshine data going back to 1895. It has recorded a total of 3 hours.
Pretty much every manned met observatory has at least one…
@@PopeLando not true Manchester gets about 1,265 hours per year according to the met office, but it is incredible that it gets less sunshine than Edinburgh and Iceland.
"So how does your invention work?" "It starts numerous tiny fires throughout the day." "That sounds most dangerous!" "Oh no, they're scientific fires." "That's alright then."
It occurs to me that if it rains in the morning then the sun comes out there will be a period of time that you don't record as well because the paper is wet.
And the glass might also don't work as well when it has water droplets on it
It looks like the paper (maybe) slips into a cavity/holder where only the focused beam can reach.
That's exactly why you'd use these in conjunction with (at least) a rainfall gauge and Stevenson Screen, so you can account for such things :)
I didn't do the calculation, but I feel that the ernergy needed to boil out the water on the paper, is not that big compared to burning the paper.
The beam is advancing very slowly, I feel that the inaccuracy would only amount in minutes (way bellow the precision of the instrument).
@@xmtxx
It’s actually the other way around, because water has a very high heat capacity.
I remember a school visit to our local meteorological station in primary school - before their 2006 upgrade, they still used one of these.
One of the best parts of a position I held for nearly 20 years as a wastewater treatment plant professional was the recording of the weather at the plant where I worked. Recording weather conditions including rainfall totals was just a small part of the daily duties were were required to log. We also were in charge for the recording of rainfall totals for the local yearly rain derby which was a charity contest to guess the yearly rainfall totals. Of course, the winners would get cash prizes for the closest guesses to the actual totals. I bought tickets every year faithfully, and never won a single dollar. Which shows that I could record the numbers just fine, but my prediction skills were sorely lacking.
Great story, thanks for sharing Brian.I love those little peeks into other people's lives
The way this thing works is so simple and so smart
As a Shetlander, I am amazed to see a day with 12.9 hours of sun - incredible!
No wonder that specific slip survived all these years
I worked at Lerwick Observatory and the maximum daily sunshine I measured on their recorder was 17.6 hours for midsummers day.
I was surprised that they both didn't know the capital of Shetland ;)
As a Met Office employee, and having done some field observation work, I can tell you I had a hearty chuckle when I realised the packaging and handling labels they use for the archive instruments are the same as those we use for in-use instrumentation
Brilliant!
Something I had never heard of, never even considered being a thing, but now that I know about it, it makes perfect sense.
From a quick search because I seem to recall seeing this in active use:
In Denmark, the " Campbell-Stokes-solskinsmåler" (sunshine meter) was used by the national meteorology institute until 2001.
You could have mentioned that the axis of this device is set to be parallel to the axis of rotation of the earth around the sun, so it always hits the same line on the card.
I used this every day at High Level, Alberta during the 80's. Sometimes a pain to change the strips if the sun burned along most of its length and you broke them trying to extract the strip.
Always a good day when objectivity had a new video
I love simple things that can explain big things, that's in essence the beauty of science sometimes.
Very cool item! As I watched this at night during a power outage, I thought what we really need is a way to play back that sunshine.
I hope one of the makers here on TH-cam decides to make one of these. It's beyond my skill, but we have some talented creators around here.
Such a beautiful instrument!
What an absolutely amazing instrument! SO clever! Thanks for the video about this device.
I'd be interested to know how the spherical globe was made with such clarity and within dimensional tolerances?
Same, they called it simple but that big glass sphere doesn't seem simple to manufacture!
@@sonaxaton I am curious about that too.
I doubt that it needs to be that precise; it would make little difference to the data recording.
@@Nilguiri Well, it has to be made to tolerances similar to the lenses in eyeglasses.
Since Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals in the 18th century, getting a proper finish would have been well understood, but probably very time consuming.
The problem I see is getting a ball of glass that big without it cracking as it cooled. Possibly by cooling it very slowly, over a period of days or longer, you could get one made.
Of course, if one did crack it could just be melted down and recast, which would help keep costs down a bit. Still, they were probably very expensive.
Spherical grinding is surprisingly simple, and absolutely wonderful. If you look into the methods of lapping and of telescope mirror grinding there's lots of lovely information
Would love to see more metrology gear and apparatus content on TH-cam! It’s awesome to see folks diving into metrology, test equipment, and stuff I deal with every day.
We still used those at the Swedish met-office when I worked there in the 1980s. Are they retired now? 🤔
It's always fascinating to me to see how science was conducted in the past - before computer models, before weather satellites, before planes that could take one anywhere in the world within a day. I especially like seeing the instruments and understanding how they were / are used. Thanks for yet another amazing video.
This is the Objectivity object I most desire!
Hello Benjamin. I have one of these Identical to the one in this video in like new condition for sale if you're interested. I live in BC Canada.
As a child in the 1960s I was fascinated by one of these whenever we visited Mablethorpe - the tourist information office on the walk down to the beach always had one in their window (fortunately south facing and not overlooked). The charts they used were white rather than blue and I always suspected that they were impregnated with something so that the northern sun could always produce a trace, regardless of how weakly it was shining.
I did this, for real, when I was young. Almost the same exact one they have on the video. 5$ a week to change a piece of paper every evening haha.
I worked as an US Air Force meteorologist for 6 years and never even heard of a "Sunshine Recorder" like this. It's so cool!
Well, the US has always been a bit backward compared to the rest of the world, especially Europe. I knew about them and I'm not a meteorologist!
I always wondered what Sunshine Recorder by Boards of Canada was about!
Just amazing how far we've come in so little time.
I heard of this item, never thought i'd get to see it in such detail. The Royal Society is a custodian to some really amazing things.
I would love one of these. Probably couldn’t afford it though. We get lots of sunshine here in the Canadian Prairies. Being so flat where I live we really can see 180 degrees.
I suppose the most cost is the glass sphere, but those might not be too expensive.
Of course nowadays you can get the same with a cheap photodetector connected to a computer.
Really interesting piece and quite lovely too.
I like the London sunshine special effect in the window scene! 😍
From the early 1960s my family went to a place in north Wales and stayed in a guest house for a week over a few years. The house had one of these in the garden but it was about a third the size and recorded on tissue paper on which it just made brown burns in bright sun. Fascinated the hell out of me.
Beautiful place...
There is one of these situated in Skanör, the southern west most corner of Sweden. It's a very beautiful piece to look at in reality so if you're in the area, give it a visit!
I wonder how they delt with rain, that would make the paper not burn it seems.. maybe it was covered in a greenhouse or something, but in the picture it was out in the open, and also it seems that would mess up the measurements
The heat could possibly also dry and then burn the paper
Such a beautiful instrument
You didn't say that there are several slots to slide the card in for Summer, Winter and the equinox seasons of Spring and Autumn.
Also, the card is special. It is made for all stations in the world at one factory in France.
I saw one those sun recorders at a small airport just few years ago, in SE Canada. It was in operation and the recording strips replaced everyday.
Nicely machined paper holder, too!
Now let me enlighten you further, that in the 90's, IKEA "invented" a spherical vase which I kept on my living room table for vase purposes. Not living in London, the sun was out quite often. But after a while I noticed strange burn marks on some papers I also kept on the table. And one day, the tv remote was melted in one corder. This worried me quite a lot, because I had no idea how that could be, other than someone being careless with matches, and that would've been me, and I wasn't ;-).
But sunny day, I smelled burnt paper and to my surprise caught the vase and the sun in action. There and then I learnt that a burning glass can also be spherical. (I didn't learn not to buy IDEA stuff, as I already knew that.)
In Britain, we design buildings of a similar nature that melt cars. #walkietalkie
* Actually, we get Uruguayans to do it for us
“Vase purposes”.
In the '70's somebody bought for us a dandelion "clock" [1] encased in clear resin. It's a nice ornament, and sat on top of the television set [2], where on one or two particularly sunny days it melted a little curved track into the plastic TV top. After that, I moved it to somewhere shady.
[1] i.e. the flower-head gone to seed, in case you didn't know
[2] this was a long time ago, children, when TV equipment had width, and height..., and DEPTH !!
Not quite as big a problem in Sweden… (at least for half the year)…
That is such a cool object. What a genius design!
If you would like to come and see one still in use the head over to Lancaster University weather station. We have one, and we still send the cards to the met office.
You're showing this as a historical instrument, but there are meteorologists still using this every day to measure sunshine duration.
What if it's sunny but raining? Won't the paper get wet?
The ‘Stokes’ part of Campbell-Stokes is the same Sir George Stokes who helped invent the Navier-Stokes equations, among other things.
I guess he just liked being the latter part of hyphenated discoveries?
The letter S has a way of doing that…
huh, i always thought it was just a bit of a boast
"Campbell stokes and Navier will blow your mind"
I love this object! "Oh no, we had a power failure. All our instruments are down." / "Uh, all except one."
Odd to hear one mis-pronounce the word 'Observatory'.
I have once seen such an instrument shown in a kids' programme on TV. I think it was on the "Sendung mit der Maus" or "Löwenzahn".
Title 246*
I remember seeing one at Oamaru airport in about 1982. (very small regional airport.. The flight service officer must have had the duty to change the charts at that timd)
I like the way she pronounces "observatory".
yeah, does someone know what accent she's speaking? it sounds rather distinct, but I can't place it
@@ursuslegolas1215 I was thinking this also, maybe a very slight French accent?
And "seismic" too.
Instead of paper with a binary light or no light. Could you make it some thicker material that can map sun intensity from the depth that gets burned away?
Had to look to see if there was any etymological relationship between "char" and "chart". Results were inconclusive.
That instrument is so cool.
I'm assuming George Stokes is the same guy famous for the Navier-Stokes equations and Stoke's Theorom?
Maybe this is an urban legend, but when I was growing up in Eastbourne Sussex, UK, They were advertising the town as “The Sunshine Capital of the South Coast” and backing it up with numbers of sunshine hours compared with the other coastal towns. The rumour was that these sunshine measuring devices, which were all from Victorian times, were getting slowly opaque. It was rumoured that Eastbourne had bought a new one, and suddenly recorded more hours that all the neighbouring towns because of the shiny new glass ball. I still wonder if it was true. BTW, the paper arcs with the burn marks used to be proudly displayed in (I think) the railway station window.
It was nice to meet Louisiane Ferlier, and that she got her 7½ minutes of fame in Objectivity video, but I miss Keith Moore.
I am surprised that nobody pointed this out, but the sunshine recorder is used as an SCP image for SCP 804!
I used to use one for Transport Canada in northern Alberta in the late 1980's.
Read about this in the Ponting's Journal of the South Pole expedition in 1910.
I love the way she pronounces observatory
And pedestal.
Those strips look like they have been produced (with their markings and everything) using the photographic Cyanotype process (i.e. they are literal blueprints). Is that correct?
What strikes me is just how immediately readable the data is.
That glass ball must be difficult to make too!
Looks like Lerwick is in the Shetlands?
I wonder if they have to change the paper out if there's a rainstorm then the sun comes out? The wet paper wouldn't burn and could throw the measurement off by an hour or two. Maybe more if the rain comes and goes all day.
Fascinating.
What do they use today measure sunlight?
Does someone know what accent she's speaking? it sounds rather distinct, but I just can't place it
Some subtle French notes in there I think.
Strange, I thought this would be 246 not 146
"It's not for the Tourist Board!" 😂😂😂😂😂😂
💜🖖
It’s an optigraph
Crazy cuz I have a crystal ball and I just recently had the independent idea for this same invention. Also pleased to learn I can trust my intuition that it already exists
'Here we have Louisiane from the Royal Society collection' :-)
She has a fascinating accent. Very interesting topic!
Ok , I love that
5:57 The data from a sunny morning would get ruined by just a few minutes rain, no?
Objectivity sets my sunshine recorder to 23.6
6:06 I'm guessing that's wild haggis poop.
Really cool piece
Sometimes it rains when sun shines... I wonder if the light is intense enough to burn wet paper?
I accidentaly built one of these once when I set up a homemade camera with ultra slow cyanotype paper in my front garden for a couple of days. I ended up with a very dim image and a burnt streak where the sun had passed.
Beautiful object!
Sunrise Recorder sounds like the title of a chillwave album.
Chillwave took a lot of inspiration from Boards of Canada, and Sunshine Recorder is one of their best songs haha
Was that Lerwick-featuring map legit?! It seems like some huge island north of Scotland that I for one never knew to exist.
Lerwick is the principal town of the Shetland Isles.
also a piece of music by Boards of Canada
I was looking for the Boards Of Canada track but ok.
Very cool instrument, great vid!
Wow. The guy from the Navier-Stokes equation made this..
1:08 and the camera
Boards of Canada
a beautiful place
Making it in a wood box seems like a high risk of fire compared to the metal frame.
Cute and such a lovely accent 😊
They must have been under glass or something to protect from rain, surely??
Apparently not and there isn't much use for that either as the sun will likely not shine then anyway. I guess people will wipe it down afterwards or it simply doesn't influence the recording much. The card I would assume to be protected.
@@VincentGroenewold hello? if the card is soaked with rain it definitely isn't going to char when the sun comes back out.
@@Muonium1 You drop a couple dozen watts on a point and the paper dries out rapidly. If the rain is that heavy there probably wasn’t much sun anyway…
Has a secondary use as an ant killer.
Now we're getting into SCP s
it's placed OUTSIDE, unprotected - what happens if / *when* it *RAINS* ?!!
It gets wet. Paper dries out rapidly under the energy delivered by the lens.
Sir any job ....
Wait, how did I miss this video. I DID THIS when I was young. Exact same as this, with the ball and paper. Got payed like 5$ a week I think hahaha.
I just wanted to find out what the weather was like on the day of my birth 11111952 and found the nearest weather station to me was 1934 to today was Manston in Kent. using a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder. Manston Location 632300E 166100N, Lat 51.346 Lon 1.337, 49m amsl
Love objectivity
It looks like something which should have wizards circling it and mumbling incantations.