reply to Chronos:
Is the timepiece based on (more than one might apply)…
…The motion of celestial objects (such as the Sun) through the sky? No
…A substance falling through some small aperture? No
…A pendulum? No
…A spring releasing tension? Yes
…Gears? Yes
…Signals from some other timepiece? No
…A quartz oscillator? No
…An electrical battery? Maybe…*
…Utility-provided alternating current? No*
Come to think of it:
Is a frequency of alternating current relevant? No
* When I say more than one kind of timepiece is involved, I think it misleads in a way I do not want to mislead. The timepieces I reference in the original puzzle are mostly wristwatches, probably wind-ups. There were most certainly, for a different reason, electric clocks and maybe even battery clocks involved.
I also know for certain that there was a critical electric clock that shaped events, but it certainly did not help our two people to arrive on time. Indeed quite the opposite.
Is the cab important? Not really. It’s just when the people showed up on time, they showed up in a cab.
Would they have also been late if they had journeyed on foot? Or taken a personal car? Or taken an Uber instead of a cab?? The thought of Uber makes me laugh. These folks involved showed up in a cab. But it does not matter. They were not on time in the actual twentieth century event because of their mode of transportation, nor could they avoid being late today with different transportaion, if the same events happened.
Does “cab” in fact refer to a taxi cab? It refers to the common street transportation by a driver of a vehicle being paid to transport customers in their to a desired place in exchange for money.
+++++
reply to dirtball:
Is there any significance to the fact that two people were arriving (as opposed to just one person, or three, or any other number)? It could have been a different number of people. But it wasn’t. There is a reason why it was two that is quite relevant if you look at it one way, but not so much if you look at it another way. Suffice to say that at the time this happened it needed to be these two people for…reasons.
If this same scenario were to play out again, a hundred years from now, would we expect the arrivees (am I coining a word here?) to be even later than seven minutes? Who knows? I expect things in a hundred years will have changed so much as to make the possibility of this type of occurrence obsolete.
Not quite answered in your response to Cheesesteak.
Is the 7 minutes specific to Frankfurt meaning, if this exact same scenario happened in another city, could the time difference be different than 7 minutes?
Before the Frankfurt visit such timliness was possible but I don’t think guaranteed… Afterwards, in the same circumstances, the Frankfurt arrivees(??) would be late.The century/millinnium was not the issue.
The city is not relevant other than that was where the folks who arrived on time were going. And thanks to the wristwatches they were on time. Had they been going elsewhere in the otherwise exact same scenario, they would have been on time then, but 7 minutes late now.
So Frankfurt is a red herring? If their scenario were, let’s say, a destination in Vancouver or Tokyo or Cairo, Illinois the whole puzzle would be exactly the same?
Not a red herring at all. You almost certainly know what this puzzle is all about, though the exact details may help or hopefuly (heh heh) mystify the situation.
Just caught this.
Were the people actually 7 minutes late although the watches around them said they were on time?
Or were they actually on-time in the 20th century but today would be 7 minutes late?
Would knowing the identities of the arrivees, or the third person they met, help solve the puzzle?
Are any of them famous? (say, enough to have their own Wikipedia page?)
Did the go to Frankfurt for some kind of competitive purpose?
Did they go to commemorate some event?
