Combination clock: if you need the time spelled out to you
“A clock,” you’re saying to yourself, “a clock, but this looks ridiculous?” and at first glance, I’d agree but look a little closer, reader a little further and you’ll see that it’s actually a work of genius.
Dutch born Swedish designer Christiaan Postma has taken apart 150 modern day clocks, pared them down to the parts that make them tick and combined them to created one large, 140cm x 140cm timepiece.
Each clockwork mechanism works together to display the time in words which are always formed at the fixed positions you would expect to see them around the face of a normal clock.
As you can see here, it’s currently 4 o’clock and if you look just above and below the word you can see where “three” has faded out and where “five” is beginning to form. Understood? For the full effect, go to Christiaan’s site, navigate to the clock and look at picture 3, an animation of how it all works.
The clock’s a little too large for me to ever consider hanging in my gaff – I never like time looming quite so large in my life – but I love the technology behind it. It’s a fantastic example of making something new from something very old indeed, 150 somethings in fact.
Christiaan Postma (via the design blog)
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