On Friday Stephen Hawking has unveiled the Corpus Clock, designed by Dr. John Taylor, which is installed on the new Taylor Library building at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The clock uses a grasshopper escapement or “chronophage” (time eater) which advances around the face of the clock with each step marking one second.
Dr Taylor, an inventor and horologist, has put 500,000 pounds of his own money and seven years into developing the clock, which has been inspired from a design by a clock made by the legendary John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude.
Of John Harrison’s many innovations, he came up with the ‘grasshopper escapement, explained Dr Taylor, referring to the device used by Harrison to turn rotational motion into a pendulum motion for timekeeping.
“No one knows how a grasshopper escapement works, so I decided to turn the clock inside out and, instead of making the escapement 35 mm across, it is 1.5 m across.”
He calls the new version of the escapement a Chronophage (time-eater) a fearsome beast which drives the clock, literally eating away time.
Here’s more on The Corpus Clock from the BBC News.
via BBC News
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