http://faerye.net/post/as-slow-as-possibleComments on "'As Slow As Possible'" - Faerye Net2003-09-06T17:45:44+00:00http://faerye.net/post/as-slow-as-possible#comment-509Re: The only question I have is...2003-09-06T17:45:44+00:002003-09-06T17:45:44+00:00<p>Yeah, in my researches I didn’t find any mention of the servicing question—I assume they’ll do it during rests, et cetera. The people involved have a website, but it’s in German. If you know German, search for “Halberstadt” and “As slow as possible” I think. Or maybe that was a link from the BBC article on the subject.<br />
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I assumed at first that they must have a mechanical player, but I finally found a mention of an organist. I assume they have it set up so that he presses the chord and sets up a sustain function of some sort and goes away. They are putting together something like an endowment, I understand, for future organists’ fees, church upkeep, et cetera. I would imagine that the “monument” and “open to the public” aspects provide some money in the vein of donations.</p>felicityhttp://faerye.net/post/as-slow-as-possible#comment-508Re: The only question I have is...2003-09-06T12:05:42+00:002003-09-06T12:05:42+00:00<p>Organs aren’t that complicated. In this sort of application, they only really have one part that moves constantly, and that part (the bellows) could easily have a redundant backup. I think the big problem will likely be vibration damage to the active pipes. But again, you could probably have a redundant set of pipes, or simply service the pipes when they are not in use.<br />
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In the long term, they might see seals fail and such. This could be a bigger problem, but I imagine that there are probably occasional rests in the piece, so during those times, one could go in and replace any seals that are hardening or cracking.<br />
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Really, it’s an interesting engineering problem. How do you make a mechanical system operate with 100% reliability on a heavy duty cycle for 639 years? If I were asked to design such a system, I would probably just make sure that there was no single point of failure that could bring the system down. Build in appropriate redundancy, and service it frequently.</p>Mithrandirhttp://faerye.net/post/as-slow-as-possible#comment-507Re: The only question I have is...2003-09-06T01:12:57+00:002003-09-06T01:12:57+00:00What I’m wondering is how they’ll keep the concert going without interruptions. I mean, even if the oldest organ is 639 years old, it probably wasn’t played continuously for that length of time, and it was probably repaired a couple of times along the way.
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So even if they did just have someone come in every three months and move the brick to a different note on the keyboard, many things could go wrong. Of course, being German, the people so persistently defining ingenuety and reliability, I’m sure they’ve thought of that, somehow.</p>GreyStorkhttp://faerye.net/post/as-slow-as-possible#comment-506The only question I have is...2003-09-05T19:15:28+00:002003-09-05T19:15:28+00:00<p>...how’d they find someone bored enough to play an organ for 639 years? Hell, how’d they find someone who’ll live for 639 years?</p>wonko