p2pnet - rss feed: Cambridge University ‘time eater’ clock
p2pnet news view | Cool:- “The grasshopper or ‘chronophage’, meaning ‘time eater’, advances around the 4ft-wide face, each step marking a second.
“Its movement triggers blue flashing lights which travel across the face eventually stopping at the correct hour and minute.
“But the clock is only accurate once every five minutes - the rest of the time the lights are simply for decoration.”
That’s how the BBC describes a £1m ($C1,910,348) clock called the “time eater” unveiled at Cambridge University by professor Stephen Hawking.
Or as The Guardian sums it up, “The hour approaches. The beast’s jaws gape, its tail quivers and then snap! Another minute has been devoured, and the hour strikes with the ominous clonk of a chain dropping into a coffin. The creature blinks twice in satisfaction.”
It ‘chronophage’ is in the shape of a giant grasshopper with 60 slits in its face which light up.
Its creator, inventor and horologist Dr John Taylor, studied at Corpus Christi in the 1950s, where his grasshopper will be on display.
Click here for a video of the clock in action.
BBC - Hawking unveils ’strangest clock’, September 19, 2008
The Guardian - Beware the time-eater: Cambridge University’s monstrous new clock, September 19, 2008
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September 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
can i get permission to use some of that in my signature…….
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
$C1,910,348!!!!
Ah well… its probably less than what Bell is paying in lobbying each month.