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Stephen Hawking Unveils "Time Eater" Clock

gyrogeerloose writes "Stephen Hawking unveiled an unsettling clock in Cambridge on Friday. Designed by John Taylor — a British horologist and inventor whose thermostatic switch is incorporated in millions of electric appliances worldwide — the clock was conceived as a tribute to another British inventor, John Harrison. Harrison invented the grasshopper escapement in the early 18th Century, which resulted in extremely accurate mechanical time keeping and was instrumental in solving the Longitude Problem. Taylor's clock, which in entirely mechanical in operation but has no hands, uses a fearsome-looking 'demon grasshopper' as its escapement. 'I... wanted to depict that time is a destroyer — once a minute is gone you can't get it back' Taylor said. 'That's why my grasshopper is not a Disney character. He is a ferocious beast that over the seconds has his tongue lolling out, his jaws opening, then on the 59th second he gulps down time.' It also (purposely) only tells correct time once every five minutes. An excellent video of the clock in action, with an explanation of its workings by its inventor, is available on YouTube."

6 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. It works, I just watched some of the video by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    That is one minute of my life I'll never get back.

  2. Re:who is it by mazarin5 · · Score: 4, Funny

    He's Stephen Hawking's non-union equivalent.

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    Fnord.
  3. Re:who is it by ozbird · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sshhh... You'll wake the editors.

  4. Sorry if you want to know about time eaters by Orion+Blastar · · Score: 4, Funny

    you actually can get the minutes back by reversing time.

    There are real time eaters out there, they exist beyond three dimensions and exist in several dimensional space. If you saw how they really look, you'd go insane like I did when I first saw them.

    First learn about super strings and then we can discuss how the universe and multiverse actually work. Hawking got a lot of things wrong, the Hawking paradox was but one of them and the information and matter and energy does not simply disappear, it ends up in a different dimension. One you Terrans have not discovered yet. But keep guessing, you'll find it eventually and then learn how to reverse time.

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  5. Re:Because /. Nerds Worship Hawking as God by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 4, Funny

    no, we worship him cos he is the ultimate nerd, all he does is sit in a chair behind a computer all day. He never even gets up, he only moves 1 muscle to control his computer, he even communicates entirely through his computer all the time, that is something we can only aspire to.

  6. the problem is the name by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Funny

    how is it keeping time while eating itself? i find it hard to understand

    "Time Eater" is a very misleading name. It should really be called a CLOCK GOBBLER.