Spinny Bar Historical Society

Our first eBook!

seb — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:21:18 +0000

Our esteemed Director, Ryan Donahue, has just published ‘his’ volume, Spinny Bars: A Short History of Revolving Restaurants.

This book has been widely praised by readers since its publication and is currently available from Lulu. We hope that it will be available on Kindle and in the iBookstore by the end of the day.

Brighten up your day and become more informed about the cultural and scientific significance of revolving restaurants today.

That Time Of Year Has Come Around

Ryan — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:45:10 +0000

That’s right, folks, it’s time for the annual Spinny Bar Historical Society Conference.

This year’s conference brings us to the perpetually-sunny Philadelphia. While there are no revolving bars and/or restaurants in the city of brotherly love, we’ll be there, just the same.

-Hanging around,
Ryan,
Director, Spinny Bar Historial Society

Celebrating Ask A Curator Day

seb — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:01:53 +0000

At the Spinny Bar Historical Society we are welcoming Ask A Curator day today.

We hope you will ask us the tough questions and our curators can show that they are all torque and all action!

Hit us up on Facebook or by tweeting @spinnybarhs.

Spinny Internet

seb — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:19:43 +0000

The Spinny Bar Historical Society was, today, excited to learn of a new initiative to make the entire Internet a giant Spinny Bar.

This initiative, known as the Revolving Internet, from Berlin-based net artist Constant Dullart is to be applauded. Constant should also be recognised in the annals of the SBHS for the appropriateness of the soundtrack to your revolving browsing. Windmills of Your Mind is a well known easy listening favourite used to close the night at many Spinny Bar Revolving Karaoke Championships.

The Largest Spinny Bar on, err, is Earth.

Ryan — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:49:30 +0000

On this most terrestrial of days, we here at the Spinny Bar Historical Society wanted to take a brief time out from our whirlwind tour of activity to bring you some fun Earthday Facts!

(shout out to Wikiscient).

Earth’s rotation period relative to the Sun (true noon to true noon) is its true solar day or apparent solar day. It is the derivative of the equation of time and thus depends on the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit and the tilt (obliquity) of Earth’s axis. Both vary over thousands of years^[1] so the annual variation of the true solar day also varies. Generally, it is longer than the mean solar day twice a year and shorter twice a year.^{[n 1]} The true solar day tends to be longer near perihelion when the Sun apparently moves along the ecliptic through a greater angle than usual, taking about 10 seconds longer to do so. Conversely, it is about 10 seconds shorter near aphelion. It is about20 seconds longer near a solstice when the projection of the Sun’s apparent movement along the ecliptic onto the celestial equator causes the Sun to move through a greater angle than usual. Conversely, near an equinox the projection onto the equator is shorter by about 20 seconds. Currently, the perihelion and solstice effects combine to lengthen the true solar day near December 22 by 30 mean solar seconds, but the solstice effect is partially cancelled by the aphelion effect near June 19 when it is only13 seconds longer. The effects of the equinoxes shorten it near March 26 and September 16 by 18 seconds and 21 seconds, respectively.^[2]^[3]^[4]

The average of the true solar day over an entire year is the mean solar day, which contains 86,400 mean solar seconds. Currently, each of these seconds is slightly longer than an SI second because Earth’s mean solar day is now slightly longer than it was during the 19th century due to tidal acceleration. The mean solar second between 1750 and 1892 was chosen in 1895 by Simon Newcomb as the independent unit of time in his Tables of the Sun. These tables were used to calculate the world’sephemerides between 1900 and 1983, so this second became known as the ephemeris second. The SI second was made equal to the ephemeris second in 1967.^[5]

Earth’s rotation period relative to the fixed stars, called its stellar day by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), is 86,164.098 903 691seconds of mean solar time (UT1) (23^h 56^m 4.098 903 691^s, 0.997 269 663 237 16 SI days).^[6]^{[n 2]} Earth’s rotation period relative to the precessing or moving mean vernalequinox, misnamed its sidereal day,^{[n 3]} is 86,164.090 530 832 88 seconds of mean solar time (UT1) (23^h 56^m 4.090 530 832 88^s, 0.997 269 566 329 08 SI days).^[6] Thus the sidereal day is shorter than the stellar day by about 8.4 ms.^[8]

Source: Wikipedia

Spinning around…but which way?

Erika — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:57:54 +0000

Centerpoint Tower. 1 of 3 spinny bars in Sydney.

Someone recently sent the Spinny Bar Historical Society a spinnytweet (use #sbhs, we are always listening) asking if spinny bars spun different directions in different hemispheres.

Well I gave a shout out to my friend Tony Mesa, from the Macton Corporation (the LARGEST spinny bar manufacturer in the world) and here is what he had to say

The drive of our revolving restaurant (Macton is the predominant manufacturer in the world) is reversible and has variable speed. Having said that, it seems the ones I’ve visited seemed to be set to rotate clockwise, however there is no specific reason for this. I don’t know if folks from the southern hemisphere would also choose to rotate them otherwise, since the clocks there also go… clockwise.

and thanks for clearing that up for us Tony!

I set a challenge to our readers. If you can document yourself in a spinny bar, and convince someone to reverse it’s direction, capture the reverse spinny bar action on film, I will send you something from the lovely Spinny Bar Historical Society merchandise selection.

now go forth…and safe spinning.

Erika

(image courtesy Chip_2904)

Visuals to make one’s head spin!

Ryan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:32:25 +0000

Being a Historical Society whose membership is largely passionate cultural heritage technologists (with a smattering of regular vanilla technologists) has some serious advantages when it comes to being able to get things done.

As such, one simply MUST check out the jaw dropping data available from one of our research fellows,

http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~twidale/spinny

We’ve also made an appearance on the wikipedia’s list of historical societies, and, as of right now, we’re the only international historical society listed! Woot! First Post, and whatnot.

-May your Spins always be Spinny
Ryan

Our first object record in our new collection system

seb — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:43:13 +0000

Thanks to our friends at eHive we have a fully operational online collection management system.

We are pleased to report that we were able to get the system set up and our first object record entered within the first 18 hours since the SBHS website went live.

Here it is.

‘The switch’ is one of the most important objects in our collection. One might call it our ‘foundational object’. Our Curatorial staff are working around the clock to document the provenance of this special object.

We aim to have more records up as we make more acquisitions. Our Director, naturally, aims for a ‘quick turnaround’ on digital records.

–

You might ask how we came to choose eHive over other collection systems. The answer is simple – the city in which they are located has a rather famous spinny bar – Orbit! We hope that by choosing products from companies based in cities with leading spinny bars we will be able to develop a 360 degree relationship between the SBHS and our service providers. Our Development Director has her work cut out for her.

Spinny Bar Historical Society Guide To Social Media

seb — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:39:50 +0000

Our Director, Ryan, presented a fantastic slideshow at Museums and the Web 2010 in Denver where he outlined the evolution of the Spinny Bar Historical Society in the digital age. In the presentation he outlined our approach to our extensive web presence and social media – and encouraged other delegates from far more established museums and societies to ‘do’ and ‘be the change’.

We’ve got a new Director of Science!

Ryan — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:38:49 +0000

Welcome to our new Director of Science, ~~Nancy~~ Mia!

We’re very fortune to have you around!

courtesy brownwindsor.