Slashdot Mirror
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."
That's just awesome. It looks like a grasshopper walking along the top. Lights spiral out from the center, until it reaches the creature, and then it starts again.
But it says that it doesn't have hands - it has LEDs all around it, which displays the time. I think that's pretty much the same thing, no?
Fnord.
That is one minute of my life I'll never get back.
God spoke to me.
So did Einstein. The quote about time spent with a pretty girl compared to sitting on a hot stove was his answer when someone asked him to explain relativity. Not as good as his explanation of the wireless telegraph (imagine a cat stretched between two cities. When you pull the tail at one end, it makes a noise at the other. Wireless telegraph is like that, but with not cat).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
He blew it. He sould at least have used a carbon-arc and hundreds of mirrors and lenses.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
He's Stephen Hawking's non-union equivalent.
Fnord.
This clock would have fit right in with the sets for The Dark Crystal.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It also says "John Tayor". The man's name is "John Taylor".
I'd call it craftmanship, engineering and art all rolled up into one.
"This is 100% art. It uses nothing more technologically noteworthy than a bunch of blue LEDs and a grasshopper escapement."
Because a mechanical timepiece isn't "technology?" Or does it only qualify as "technology" if it's less than ten years old?
"and the grasshopper escapement is almost 3 centuries old."
Does it no longer work? Has the warranty expired?
Without external communications capabilities (e.g. WWVB or NTP), I guarantee you that this clock keeps more accurate time than any timepiece you've ever owned.
Sshhh... You'll wake the editors.
It does appear to use blue leds - But there is no circuitry to control their 'flashing'.
This clock is a masterpiece of mechanical engineering.
The time is displayed with the lights by rotating a series of annular overlapping disks which have slots in them. The slots are precisely engineered in a "vernier" fashion, so they don't all line up at once, but only as the clock very subtly moves. There isn't a "seconds" hand, rather there is a "hand" that seems to rotate around the entire clock once per second, and it purely shows the rotation of the fastest outer annulus, with which the grasshopper escarpment engages.
The thing is, if this were purely "art" then it wouldn't work.
You're forgetting that all technologies are "art".
The defining feature that makes such things be labelled as tech rather than art is that tech works.
Tech doesn't just refer to "electronic". In fact if this clock were electronic, it would be one hell of a lot less impressive.
This clock works, (perhaps with a "bug" or two...) therefore it is tech. It doesn't "cop out" and use cheap and easy electronics, therefore it is impressive. It's designer shows he can make mechanical assemblies with such precision that it's dynamic motion can be used to keep time - a skill which is becoming rapidly lost with our current state of cheap electronics from China.
Is is Important Tech? Perhaps not, unless some circumstance conspires to require precise timekeeping in say an environment where electronics dare not go. Maybe some day we might need clocks that work near a lot of high energy ionising radiation, who knows.
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.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"There's nothing in the article to indicate what it uses as a timebase, except a comment about an "electric motor." AC line frequency, the same as my bedroom alarm clock?"
The base is the grasshopper escapement, the entire point of the clock, what it commemorates, and what the article is all about. The motor is used to wind the clock's spring, which is released from tension at a steady rate by the swinging of the escapement.
And because you didn't RTFA in your effort to be a smart-ass, you've come out looking like a dumb-ass for not understanding the concept of a pendulum clock. This right here is an indicator of why the "technology" tag is appropriate for this: people here (such as yourself) don't know how it works.
Who tagged this "technology"? This is 100% art.
I disagree -- this is definitely Technology as well as Art. There's no reason it has to be only one or the other. Besides, the ancient Greeks felt all technology was art. The word "technology" itself comes from the Greek root "techne" which means art or skill.
Not all technology is computers and transistors. Technology has existed and improved throughout the ages, from the ability to make fire and work with tools to the creation of the wheel. Clocks and geared mechanisms certainly make for interesting technology from large computers such as Babbage's Difference Engine to portable devices such as the Antikythera mechanism.
It would be possible to even have "modern" technology without transistors although perhaps it wouldn't be the same as the high tech steam powered science of the Steampunk Genre.
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.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
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.