London: Most clocks just tell time. Not the newly unveiled clock at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, which aims to disorient and dazzle, to remind people of their own mortality and to pay tribute to one of the most famous watchmakers of all time.
No wonder it cost more than $1.8 million to build and drew the attention of famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who formally unveilled the masterwork on Friday. This clock blasts away all preconceptions about timepieces. For one thing, it has no hands. And it is specially designed to run in erratic fashion, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.
The ‘Corpus clock’ is the brainchild of inventor John Taylor, who used his own money to build it, in part to pay homage to the genius of John Harrison, the Englishman who in 1725 invented the “grasshopper” escapement—a mechanical device that helps regulate a clock's movement.
Making a visual pun on the grasshopper image, Taylor has designed a fantasy version of a grasshopper at the top of the clock face, and uses this beast— with its long needle teeth and barbed tail—as an integral part of the clockworks. Its jaws begin to open halfway through a minute, then snap shut at 59 seconds. The grasshopper is called a chronophage, or “time eater”. “Time is gone, he’s eaten it,” said Taylor. “My object was simply to turn a clock inside out so that the grasshopper became a reality.”
The chronophage stands atop the clock face, which is four feet in diameter. It displays time with light—a light races around the outer ring once every second, pausing briefly at the actual second. The next ring inside indicates the minute, and the inner ring shows the hour. The apparent motion is regulated mechanically through slots in moving discs. Weirdly, the pendulum slows down or speeds up. Sometimes it stops, the chronophage shakes a foot, and the pendulum moves again. Because of that, the time display may be as much as a minute off, although it swings back to the correct time every five minutes.
He noted Albert Einstein’s observation about how the pace of time varies based on experience: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”
On Taylor’s clock, the hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed. AP
GIANT TIMEPIECE
About two metres in diameter, the Corpus clock is made from discs of stainless steel and plated with 24-carat gold
A brainchild of inventor John Taylor, it does not use hands or numerals to show the time
With each slackening of the grasshopper’s jaw, and release of its claws, a minute is devoured
The hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed
The time display may be as much as a minute off, although it tells the correct time every 5 minutes
The clock took seven years to build at the cost of $1.8 million
No wonder it cost more than $1.8 million to build and drew the attention of famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who formally unveilled the masterwork on Friday. This clock blasts away all preconceptions about timepieces. For one thing, it has no hands. And it is specially designed to run in erratic fashion, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.
The ‘Corpus clock’ is the brainchild of inventor John Taylor, who used his own money to build it, in part to pay homage to the genius of John Harrison, the Englishman who in 1725 invented the “grasshopper” escapement—a mechanical device that helps regulate a clock's movement.
Making a visual pun on the grasshopper image, Taylor has designed a fantasy version of a grasshopper at the top of the clock face, and uses this beast— with its long needle teeth and barbed tail—as an integral part of the clockworks. Its jaws begin to open halfway through a minute, then snap shut at 59 seconds. The grasshopper is called a chronophage, or “time eater”. “Time is gone, he’s eaten it,” said Taylor. “My object was simply to turn a clock inside out so that the grasshopper became a reality.”
The chronophage stands atop the clock face, which is four feet in diameter. It displays time with light—a light races around the outer ring once every second, pausing briefly at the actual second. The next ring inside indicates the minute, and the inner ring shows the hour. The apparent motion is regulated mechanically through slots in moving discs. Weirdly, the pendulum slows down or speeds up. Sometimes it stops, the chronophage shakes a foot, and the pendulum moves again. Because of that, the time display may be as much as a minute off, although it swings back to the correct time every five minutes.
He noted Albert Einstein’s observation about how the pace of time varies based on experience: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”
On Taylor’s clock, the hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed. AP
GIANT TIMEPIECE
About two metres in diameter, the Corpus clock is made from discs of stainless steel and plated with 24-carat gold
A brainchild of inventor John Taylor, it does not use hands or numerals to show the time
With each slackening of the grasshopper’s jaw, and release of its claws, a minute is devoured
The hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed
The time display may be as much as a minute off, although it tells the correct time every 5 minutes
The clock took seven years to build at the cost of $1.8 million
Professor Stephen Hawking after unveiling The Corpus Clock at the Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, England, on Friday
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