This fully mechanical clock – it appears only the lights are electronic – uses a stylized version of the Harrison’s grasshopper escapement to drive the two disks around the face. This is 300 year old technology, folks, with a wry sense of humor and amazing design.
Current watches use lever or coaxial escapements so for the inventor to use this one is a testament to one of the earliest and most potent pieces of technology ever created. And check out that crazy bug.
via Guardian via Giz
I wonder how much I can buy one for here in the US…
I wonder how much I can buy one for here in the US…
Cool.
How can we view this wonder without paying tribute to esteemed author Tom Robbins (72) for his description of the clockworks in his 1976 novel, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”?
“Take now the clockworks… The clockworks, being genuine and not much to look at, don’t generate the drama of an Earth-tilt or a flying saucer, nor do they seem to offer any immediate panacea for humanity’s fifty-seven varieties of heartburn. But suppose that you’re one of those persons who feels trapped, to some degree, trapped matrimonially, occupationally, educationally or geographically, or trapped in something larger than all those; trapped in a system, or what you might describe as an “increasingly deadening technocracy” or a “theater of paranoia and desperation” or something like that. Now, if you are one of those persons… wouldn’t the very knowledge that there are clockworks ticking away behind the wallpaper of civilization, unbeknownst to leaders, organizers and managers (the President included), wouldn’t that knowledge, suggesting as it does the possibility of unimaginable alternatives, wouldn’t that knowledge be a bubble bath for your heart?” ~Tom Robbins, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”