Sankul
संकुल  

Currently ongoing Projects at Sankul

A. Popularising the Bharat Clock - Using Sexagesimal to re-introduce Ghati : Pala : Vipala

Ask any Indian child to count, at a natural pace, upto 10, in her/his own mother tongue,; the time lapsed would likely be 10 vipalas and not 10 seconds! Note that 10 vipalas equals 4 seconds. The longer time period taken (slower count) for a second, a minute or an hour to lapse, can be attributed to the coarse division of the day to suit a 12-hour sundial, that was used by the Egyptians  in Mesopotamia  centuries back (1500 BC).

In South Asia, since the period of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Ghatikas (water clocks) were used to keep time of the day. It became so popular in all religions, castes and communities, that even the sun-dials were marked in terms of Ghatis - the unit of the water clock. Unfortunately, due to invasion and colonisation in the last millennium, India shifted from the 60-Ghati clock to the 12-hour clock.

The objective, here, is to make the ancient '60 Ghatika' clock popular, once again, in India, due to its numerous advantages.  Currently its usage is limited to Astronomers and Astrologers. On the other hand the '24-hour' clock has been put to use, worldwide, for over centuries, for reasons that are no longer relevant nor valid. The revolutionary transition from the 'hour : minute : second'  clock to the 'ghati : pala ; vipala' clock has great ramifications:  for instance, 1 'vipala' = 0.4 'seconds'; the 'red' vipala' hand, and as a result, the 'pala' and 'ghati' hands would rotate/ count  2.5 times faster in comparison to the '24 hour' clock.

Here, we propose to make the revolutionary transition, from the '24-hour' clock to the '60-ghati' clock, easy and convenient for the general public. We suggest project execution in two stages. Initially, in Phase 1 we propose resetting of the '60-ghati' clock to zero, everyday,  at 6:00 AM, rather than at sunrise. This means that all the Ghati clocks throughout India would read the same time, at all times. We call this the 'Phase 1 Bharat Clock'. The constraint would also make the design of a Phase 1 Bharat clock and its manufacture as a quartz clockwork mechanism,  an easier exercise. 

In Phase 2, the Bharat clock could be redesigned to reset as per the local sunrise time at any particular geographical location.  Note the 'Phase 2 Bharat Clock' is already available in the form of an Android app- see Alok Mandavgane's App on Google Play Store : 'Hindu Calendar'.  But to make the '60-ghati' clock more popular, for day to day usage, what we need is a '60-ghati wall-clock'. 

The design of the Phase 1 Bharat clock, here,  is the first such attempt.

What is a Sankul? 

Sankul (संकुल) is a premises set up in the industry 'Baroda Electric Meters Ltd.', for fresh engineering trainees, interns, undergraduates to acquire missing skills in Embedded Systems, IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence and related disciplines using an hands-on approach. Click here for more details about us.