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Personal

Weird Clocks

 

Rolling ball clock

Femius tries to fill our house with weird clocks whenever he finds one. A favorite one is the rolling ball clock:

Click on picture for source

Every minute a motorized arm picks up a steel ball from the bottom rails (reservoir), lifts it to the top of the clock and deposits it in a system of gutters. Balls accumulate in three rows: 1 for minutes, 1 for every five minutes, and 1 for every hour. The clock in the photo reads 09:53. I currently have a recent model, just like the one in the photo (also available from Edmund Scientific gadget section); the original design dates from the seventies. Here is a drawing from the original patent (1981).

patentclock

See: www.dansdata.com/timemachine.htm and www.stuartsinger.com/ballclock.htm