Devouring time

Cosmic Variance
By Daniel Holz
Jun 8, 2009 4:46 AMNov 5, 2019 8:20 AM

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My previous post on watches seems to have been misconstrued as an attack on all things mechanical. So, to establish my street cred as a geek, it looks like I'm forced to post about my favorite mechanical timekeeper: the chronophage. It's the coolest clock ever. It runs fast. It runs slow. It runs forward. It runs backward. It stops. It is precisely the right time once every five minutes. The clock is a striking illustration that time is fleeting and unreliable. The escapement features a hideous bug, literally eating the seconds as they pass. The passage of time is terrifying, after all.

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