The Ship's Bell

This completely useless Windows(tm) program will strike the traditional ship's
watches or conventional clock hours on your computer sound system.  You must
have a sound card or perhaps a good speaker driver.  Not all drivers work,
however.  The one supplied with Dashboard 3.0 is not satisfactory for the
purpose as it locks up Windows while playing sounds and messes up the
program's timing. No other run-time is required.

INSTALLATION

Create a subdirectory called SHIPBELL (or whatever you wish to call it).  Use
PKUNZIP to unpack the files to this directory.  Go into the Program Manager
and select a group to receive the program icon.  Click "File" and then "New"
and then accept "Program Item".  Enter "Ship's Bell" on the first line
(without the quote marks) and SHIPBELL on the "Command" line.  Enter
C:\SHIPBELL on the "Working Directory" line or change this to whatever drive
and directory you are using.  Click "OK" and you should have the new icon in
the group.

OPERATION

When you run the program, its control panel will come up.  This allows you to
select two strike patterns, the traditional ship's watch bells or a
conventional hour chime.  You can also select one of four bell sounds
including a tower or church bell, a ship's bell, a clock chime or a cuckoo
clock.  The cuckoo is only suitable for use with the hour strike.  Click the
"Test" button to hear the different sounds and to make sure that the program
works with your sound driver.  The "Test" button should play a double-bong
followed by a single bong on the bells and simply plays the cuckoo twice.

In some cases, it may be necessary to adjust the playback speed of the sound
driver.  This is done from the "Control Panel".  Double-click "Drivers" and
pick the "Sound" or "Wave" driver, NOT the "MCI" driver.  Click "Setup" and
adjust the speed bar until each strike rings for exactly two seconds.

To put the program in operation, click the "Enable" button.  It will strike
the hours and half-hours as long as it is loaded and enabled.  The "Enable"
button will be "greyed out" when the program is enabled.  Click "Disable" to
shut off the striking and "Close" to unload the program.  You can click the
down-arrow in the upper right corner of the window to minimize the program as
an icon at the bottom of the screen.

If you wish to load the program automatically, put the icon in the "Startup"
group.  Click the "Load Enabled" and "Load Minimized" boxes so that both show
an "X".  The program will now come up in operation and minimized as an icon.

It may not strike reliably if you are running a full-screen DOS prompt at the
hour or half-hour.

HISTORY OF THE SHIP'S BELLS

Life on a ship is traditionally divided into six watches of four hours each,
beginning at noon.  The watches are marked by striking a bell at half-hour
intervals.  This was controlled by a half-hour sand-glass in the days before
marine chronometers.  A bell strike is added for each half hour.  at 12:30,
the bell is struck once.  At 1:00, it is struck twice.  At 1:30, three times,
etc. The bell is struck in groups of two, so that 1:30 is: dingding...ding.
2:00 is dingding...dingding, etc.  4:00, 8:00 and 12:00 are struck as eight
bells (four groups of two) at which time the watch crew changes and the cycle
starts over.  The captain or navigator would determine the moment of noon by
observation of the sun and the sand-glass would be turned at that time to
start the next days watches.

The program also allows you to choose a conventional clock strike if you
wish.  That is, it strikes one bell for each hour on the hour and a single
bell for the half-hour.

ALARM FUNCTION

You can set an alarm function by clicking the "Set Alarm" box so that it
has an "X" in it.  Set the hour and minute for the alarm by clicking on the
arrows to "spin" the numbers or click in the number box and type the time
in.  Use 24 hour time for the hours.  1:00PM is hour 13.  Don't move the
cursor out of these boxes with the box blank as the program will crash.
That is a bug in these "spin edit" thingies which I didn't write, but they
are too cute not to use them!  The alarm sounds a diaphone at the appointed
hour.

DISCLAIMER

This program may be used without fee or charge, but no warantee of any kind
is expressed or implied.  Use it at your own risk.

TECHNICAL NOTES

The program is written in Borland Delphi, "Visual Pascal".  I'll probably put
the source code in the Delphi Forum library.  The church bell and cuckoo were
edited from existing sound files.  The others are recordings of MARYNYA's
bell and bulkhead clock.  The recordings were done with a Sound Blaster card
and a fairly good stereo microphone.  Editing was minimal and done with the
little "Sound Recorder" program which comes with Windows 3.1.

Mike Hughes 75766,1455 (via Internet: 75766.1455@compuserve.com)