Stephen Hawking to Unveil New Way to Tell Time

"The Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr. John Taylor [and] will be unveiled [this week] by Prof. Stephen Hawking, cosmologist and author of the global bestseller, A Brief History of Time.

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"'One of my heroes is John Harrison,' [Taylor] says.

"'Of 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.

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He calls the new version of the escapement a 'Chronophage' (time-eater) – 'a fearsome beast which drives the clock, literally "eating away time".'"

Hands are not among the clock's features; instead, time is marked by light.

More here; but John Harrison's 1776 masterpiece, the Late Regulator, is possibly even more interesting; more on that here.