Monday, September 22, 2008

Question - 63


Identify the visuals and connect.

Answer: The connect is the chronophage (literally "time eater"), a sculptural clock in Cambridge. The clock pays homage to John Harrison (top right), a legendary clock maker who solved the longitude problem by making the first accurate clocks. His major invention was the grasshopper escapement (bottom right), a low friction mechanism for moving the clock's gears. The chronophage features a large grasshopper at the top as a reference to this. More details can be found here. Vateez, Iam, Adi, Mekhala, Manix and Hirak got it. Well done.

6 comments:

imitator said...

grasshopper escapement, john harrison

Anonymous said...

John Harrison and his Marine Chronometer's Grasshopper escapement on the right

On left is Stephen Hawking's Chronophage mad by John Taylor paying homage to Harrison

One fought to set it right and the other to set it wrong and there was no Newton

Hail to John Harrison

Anonymous said...

Grasshopper escapement.

Top right is John Harrison who designed grasshoper escapement, bottom right is an illustration of it, and left is the new corpus clock at Cambridge based on grasshopper escapement

mekie said...

This is the 'chronophage' clock designed by John Taylor & unveiled recently at the Corpus Christi college, Cambridge. It's a tribute to English clockmaker John Harrison who invented the grasshopper escapement - a tiny internal device that releases a clock's gears at each swing of its pendulum.

Anonymous said...

John Harrison and the grasshopper escapement!

hirak said...

John Harrison's chronometer that is written about in Dava Sobel's wonderful book - Longitude